Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are even though I think they have the right to do so.
No no no no no. Because once you allow the threat of religious violence to infringe free speech then when do you stop?
Now Sweden is about to buckle and forbid Koran burning. Then it will be cartoons of the prophet. Than any criticism of the prophet. Then anything that remotely incites any of these bearded fuckers
Ffs we’ve seen this unfold in the uk and France. Teachers beheaded and in hiding So you end up with full on medieval blasphemy laws that only protect one religion - because that religion is so aggressive and violent
How much more evidence do you need? You people are pathetic.
Oh I don't think we are necessarily disagreeing. I agree it shouldn't be outlawed. I agree with you. I think @Casino_Royale last post expressed my views better than I did. He got it spot on. I defend the right to burn the Koran. It is exceedingly stupid and insulting to do so.
Do you defend* the right to burn effigies of the Pope in the Falls Road?
The point being that some actions are viewed by their targets as threatening as well as insulting.
* "Assert" would be a better word, because there is no first amendment to any constitution in Britain, so it's not as if a right to carry out such an action actually exists. A right is kind o'thing that is pronounced into existence by the state.
Yes but you might be arrested for inciting violence. There is a time and a place. Falls Road, no. Lewes bonfire society where it is done every year, yes. A perfect example where outlawing it is stupid.
That's an excellent distinction that you draw. Those are two very different contexts.
But there's no tradition of unthreatening Koran-burning here. If there were, I'd be OK with it being allowed to continue.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
It is extremely rude, disrespectful and provocative to burn a religious text, as it is a flag - and I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, I would defend someone's right to do so and I'd certainly like to call out some of Islam's central tenets as bollocks, politely so, as far as possible, because I think they are.
Boris back in 2005:
"The proposed ban on incitement to "religious hatred" makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself; and that would be pretty absurd, when you consider that the Bill's intention is to fight Islamophobia." - writing in The Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2005
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
It is extremely rude, disrespectful and provocative to burn a religious text, as it is a flag - and I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, I would defend someone's right to do so and I'd certainly like to call out some of Islam's central tenets as bollocks, politely so, as far as possible, because I think they are.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
This is interesting. You and @leon have taken the exact opposite positions and (possibly) perceive me to be on the opposite side of the argument to both of you. Oxymoron.
I am with @Casino_Royale with this one for a change and in the middle. I'm for free speech. You can burn bibles, burn flags, but accept there are consequences for for insulting people.
Thanks. My only modification to that would be that those consequences cannot include violence and the threat of that violence cannot be used to blackmail against the action in the first place.
That is where the line must be drawn.
Agree. I was thinking along the lines of you might be arrested for inciting violence by your actions, or if there were such a law for being a prat in thinking that burning the bible in public was a good idea. That sort of thing.
I'm glad we've moved on from the emotive cycling debate to the much more relaxed Koran burning discussion.
It's no joke getting on the wrong side of a radicalised sect that brooks no counter-argument, believes in spreading its message 'by the sword', and has a religious zeal that can become suicidal.
On the other hand some Muslims can be almost as bad.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
It is extremely rude, disrespectful and provocative to burn a religious text, as it is a flag - and I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, I would defend someone's right to do so and I'd certainly like to call out some of Islam's central tenets as bollocks, politely so, as far as possible, because I think they are.
Would I go to the barricades to fight to the death for the right of people of people to insult others and sow division just because they can?
No I wouldn't. Those guys can look after themselves.
Yes, I would.
You wouldn't because you're scared.
The right is important because otherwise we are accepting there are some objects and subjects that are off limits, and none should be.
No. It's because I think with rights comes with responsibilities. If people don't accept that, I'm not going to bother with them. There are plenty of genuinely oppressed people that should get my attention instead.
Sorry.
Not how law and morality works. You don't get to ignore fraud victims because you personally relate more closely to battered wives, any more than you can commit one of those offences more easily than the other out of personal preference.
and with rights do NOT come responsibilities. My right not to be assaulted or murdered is independent of anything I do.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
Hi all. Just checking in. Am on Day 9 of an 18 day retreat. Free day today. No 5 hours of meditation or teaching today. As for politics. Nothing much matters. And what does doesn't matter much. Love to you all. Later.
Hi all. Just checking in. Am on Day 9 of an 18 day retreat. Free day today. No 5 hours of meditation or teaching today. As for politics. Nothing much matters. And what does doesn't matter much. Love to you all. Later.
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
This is interesting. You and @leon have taken the exact opposite positions and (possibly) perceive me to be on the opposite side of the argument to both of you. Oxymoron.
I am with @Casino_Royale with this one for a change and in the middle. I'm for free speech. You can burn bibles, burn flags, but accept there are consequences for for insulting people.
I'm not, although I accept the position of absolute free speech is a valid one.
If it turns out banning wilful Koran burning would also impact the free speech of the much better people than them, I might accept the Koran burning. But I would be doing that for the rights of the much better people, not the rights of the bastards burning the Koran.
What's the point? These people will never believe in climate change, they will always think it's a hoax or over-exaggerated. Best to ignore them and move on.
You need "these people" because they are the solution. Setting up an "us" and "them" is the route to failure.
I do not have the energy, others can fight, I admitted defeat long ago. We are doomed.
No we're not. But here's a tip: stop telling people they can never fly again, travel again except by bike, and must have cold homes and eat mung beans forevermore and pay more for the privilege.
They'll tell you to Foxtrot Oscar and ignore you.
I've never said any of those things on here, you're putting words in my mouth there mate. We are doomed and I accept that. Good day.
At any given point in time, there are people saying: "We are doomed". In retrospect it always turns out to be nonsense.
Some survivors bias there!
Clearly people who were correct to express their foreboding of doom aren't around to discuss it afterwards.
FWIW, to judge from the way Trump came down those aeroplane steps he seems to be in better than usual psychological form - grasping and ritual ungrasping, but no ritualised tapping. Either he won't go bananas in the courtroom today, or else he's giving it his all just to manage everyday things and he will. Probably the former. (Storing it all up.)
I'm very optimistic about the future. Acid rain and the hole in the Ozone Layer used to be huge environmental challenges. Solved both. Also, the UN agreed a charter to protect 1/3rd of the world's oceans earlier this year.
We will crack this one too. Don't worry.
I think we absolutely are doomed but you can be the hopeful one out of the two of us. I hope you are proven correct.
By doomed, what do you mean, exactly? We will have challenges for sure, but humans have got where they are today by overcoming challenges.
Fallacy central on here this evening. When you say I am going to die what do you mean, exactly? I will have challenges for sure, but I have got where I am today by overcoming challenges, including severe illness and serious accidents, and I have no doubt I will continue to do so indefinitely.
I am genuinely curious by what people mean when they say we are doomed. Do they believe that the human race will die out? That civilisation will collapse? Or what? I don’t think it’s an unfair question to ask, nor does it require some sixth form debating club snark.
I think if a point is made against you, your choice is to refute it or concede it. Characterising it as "sixth form debating club snark" strikes me as a graceless way of doing the latter.
Substantively: the earth is a complex system. So is a lorry. If you have a lorry and carry out zero maintenance on it, while loading it and loading it and then loading it some more, it is very difficult to predict the exact failure mode, but very easy indeed to predict eventual failure. To revert to the sixth form snark, if I say to the lorry driver at Tebay services that I don't fancy his chances of getting to Glasgow, his reply that he has made it all the way from Dover to here is not a knockdown argument.
I don’t disagree with your logic, just I asked about what people mean by doomed? Your answer is nothing to do with that, and more concerned with playing logic games.
I don't regard logic as "games," it's a bit more serious than that.
And I have answered your question: we are overloading and not maintaining a complex system which is currently sort-of in equilibrium, and will cease to be. Exactly how it fails is unpredictable, but famine, flooding, mass migration leading to war, leading to tactical then strategic nuclear war, is my best guess.
The planet has been at higher global temps before. I believe the equilibrium position can be changed to different levels. Lots of feedback loops, both positive and negative in the system. One, more heat, more water vapour, more clouds, more energy reflected back into space. Or do you think we are heading down the Venus route (not what the evidence of hotter past temperatures suggests)?
The planet without 8 billion people on it has not been at higher temperatures before. I strongly doubt we are "going down the Venus route" but Venus has AFAWK not had (a) life forms armed with (b) nuclear weapons on it in the past, so what's the relevance? The planet will get by just fine and so will life, including mammalian and indeed human life, but that doesn't preclude my best guess of "famine, flooding, mass migration leading to war, leading to tactical then strategic nuclear war." Why would it?
Hi all. Just checking in. Am on Day 9 of an 18 day retreat. Free day today. No 5 hours of meditation or teaching today. As for politics. Nothing much matters. And what does doesn't matter much. Love to you all. Later.
One of the only times on pb where telling another poster to chill out isn't appropriate. In fact to do so could be fatal.
Is there another human being on the planet that talks like Loyd Grossman?
Rory Bremner.
If you are a collector of odd accents, try listening to the Radio 4 announcer Neil Nunes.
That's the poshest most RP Jamaican accent I've ever heard.
Mrs PtP and I have talked about this at some length but we can't figure out what is going on. It sounds very much like he had a perfectly normal Caribbean accent at one point but took elocution lessons and didn't finish the course. The result is some sort of hybrid Jamaican/posh-BBC. It is very distracting when he is reading the news. You are thinking about his speech mannerisms rather than what he is saying.
I've always though Loyd Grossman was putting it on deliberately, but I don't know and don't care.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
It is extremely rude, disrespectful and provocative to burn a religious text, as it is a flag - and I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, I would defend someone's right to do so and I'd certainly like to call out some of Islam's central tenets as bollocks, politely so, as far as possible, because I think they are.
Would I go to the barricades to fight to the death for the right of people of people to insult others and sow division just because they can?
No I wouldn't. Those guys can look after themselves.
Yes, I would.
You wouldn't because you're scared.
The right is important because otherwise we are accepting there are some objects and subjects that are off limits, and none should be.
No. It's because I think with rights comes with responsibilities. If people don't accept that, I'm not going to bother with them. There are plenty of genuinely oppressed people that should get my attention instead.
Sorry.
Not how law and morality works. You don't get to ignore fraud victims because you personally relate more closely to battered wives, any more than you can commit one of those offences more easily than the other out of personal preference.
and with rights do NOT come responsibilities. My right not to be assaulted or murdered is independent of anything I do.
Sorry.
Completely irrelevant to my point. Sorry (for the last time).
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
The climate was different in the past. I don't think anyone denies this. I don't think there's much evidence that it was substantially warmer a few hundred years ago.
The most recent change that made a large difference in Britain was it getting much wetter some time during the Bronze Age. There's plenty of good evidence for that.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
The climate was different in the past. I don't think anyone denies this. I don't think there's much evidence that it was substantially warmer a few hundred years ago.
The most recent change that made a large difference in Britain was it getting much wetter some time during the Bronze Age. There's plenty of good evidence for that.
There IS evidence that the planet was warmer than recent times (before the current warming) in the Roman and Medieval warm periods. Lots of separate evidences. The great era of Cathedral building in Europe corresponds with generally benign climates, that tailed off in the mid 14th C.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
It is extremely rude, disrespectful and provocative to burn a religious text, as it is a flag - and I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, I would defend someone's right to do so and I'd certainly like to call out some of Islam's central tenets as bollocks, politely so, as far as possible, because I think they are.
Would I go to the barricades to fight to the death for the right of people of people to insult others and sow division just because they can?
No I wouldn't. Those guys can look after themselves.
Yes, I would.
You wouldn't because you're scared.
The right is important because otherwise we are accepting there are some objects and subjects that are off limits, and none should be.
No. It's because I think with rights comes with responsibilities. If people don't accept that, I'm not going to bother with them. There are plenty of genuinely oppressed people that should get my attention instead.
Sorry.
Not how law and morality works. You don't get to ignore fraud victims because you personally relate more closely to battered wives, any more than you can commit one of those offences more easily than the other out of personal preference.
and with rights do NOT come responsibilities. My right not to be assaulted or murdered is independent of anything I do.
Sorry.
Completely irrelevant to my point. Sorry (for the last time).
A 100% answer to your point, if you were not too thick to see it. Unless you seriously think that my right not to be murdered is contingent on my carrying out some responsibility. Do you? If you do, what is the bare minimum I have to do to validate the right?
I'm glad we've moved on from the emotive cycling debate to the much more relaxed Koran burning discussion.
It's no joke getting on the wrong side of a radicalised sect that brooks no counter-argument, believes in spreading its message 'by the sword', and has a religious zeal that can become suicidal.
On the other hand some Muslims can be almost as bad.
*ah, my coat*
It's no joke getting on the wrong side of a radicalised sect that has access to 2.5 tonne weapons, believes that might is right, and kills 1,600 people each year.
On the other hand some Muslims can be almost as bad.
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
As I noted earlier, one very good reason for making wine in England even if it was crap: ritual usage, in the Church.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
Was Martin Luther a wanker for nailing his faeces to the door?
Ok he'd have been a wanker (or equivalent medieval insult) for doing that, but people also thought he was a wanker for nailing his theses to the door too.
In a free society people have the right to be wankers. And some people need to be, such as Luther, to challenge assumptions and enable progress.
A newspaper like the Grauniad opposing liberalism and freedom is more of a threat to liberalism than people abusing their freedoms: which they have every right to do.
If people are being wankers, roll your eyes at them and ignore them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. Certainly don't abolish valuable freedoms.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
As I noted earlier, one very good reason for making wine in England even if it was crap: ritual usage, in the Church.
But to drink with youjr high class meal ...
Missed your earlier post, but does it say in Leviticus or something rhat wine has to be home-grown?
Haven't taken communion for 40 odd years, but Cof E wine is South African port I think - presumably because unfortified red wine is unpalatable to those not used to it. I have always remembered the bit in 1984 where O'Brien gives W and J wine and they are disappointed how thin and bitter it is.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
As I noted earlier, one very good reason for making wine in England even if it was crap: ritual usage, in the Church.
But to drink with youjr high class meal ...
Missed your earlier post, but does it say in Leviticus or something rhat wine has to be home-grown?
Haven't taken communion for 40 odd years, but Cof E wine is South African port I think - presumably because unfortified red wine is unpalatable to those not used to it. I have always remembered the bit in 1984 where O'Brien gives W and J wine and they are disappointed how thin and bitter it is.
Was thinking more of cost and practicalities. No offie for your typical monk in Yorkshire to nip round and buy some port or Buckfast, eh?
But - on further reflection - wasn't it only the celebrant who took a sip of the wine? In which case even a small amount of manky Chateau Scunthorpe would do perfectly well to keep the ritual year rolling along.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
As I noted earlier, one very good reason for making wine in England even if it was crap: ritual usage, in the Church.
But to drink with youjr high class meal ...
Missed your earlier post, but does it say in Leviticus or something rhat wine has to be home-grown?
Haven't taken communion for 40 odd years, but Cof E wine is South African port I think - presumably because unfortified red wine is unpalatable to those not used to it. I have always remembered the bit in 1984 where O'Brien gives W and J wine and they are disappointed how thin and bitter it is.
Was thinking more of cost and practicalities. No offie for your typical monk in Yorkshire to nip round and buy some port or Buckfast, eh?
But - on further reflection - wasn't it only the celebrant who took a sip of the wine? In which case even a small amount of manky Chateau Scunthorpe would do perfectly well to keep the ritual year rolling along.
Yes, I think that's right. One of the 39 Articles is Of The Two Kinds, saying it's no longer Ok for only priests to get da wine.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
Didn't know who they were, either collectively or individually, so not much point in reporting. I forgot about the CCTV, though. It was about 20 years ago. But what shocked me was it wasn't the usual ned or courier or male student doing top speed on the pavement. Those people should have known a lot better. Yet they behaved to me just as they whined car drivers were behaving to them. All of them, collectively.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
Was Martin Luther a wanker for nailing his faeces to the door?
Ok he'd have been a wanker (or equivalent medieval insult) for doing that, but people also thought he was a wanker for nailing his theses to the door too.
In a free society people have the right to be wankers. And some people need to be, such as Luther, to challenge assumptions and enable progress.
A newspaper like the Grauniad opposing liberalism and freedom is more of a threat to liberalism than people abusing their freedoms: which they have every right to do.
If people are being wankers, roll your eyes at them and ignore them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. Certainly don't abolish valuable freedoms.
On the other hand, it's completely OK for the Guardian to say they are wankers for burning the Koran, so long as they say that being wanker is not illegal.
(And, of course, we're falling into the trap set by both sets of wankers. They both want a fight. We don't have to give it to them.)
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
It is extremely rude, disrespectful and provocative to burn a religious text, as it is a flag - and I wouldn't do it.
Nevertheless, I would defend someone's right to do so and I'd certainly like to call out some of Islam's central tenets as bollocks, politely so, as far as possible, because I think they are.
Would I go to the barricades to fight to the death for the right of people of people to insult others and sow division just because they can?
No I wouldn't. Those guys can look after themselves.
Yes, I would.
You wouldn't because you're scared.
The right is important because otherwise we are accepting there are some objects and subjects that are off limits, and none should be.
No. It's because I think with rights comes with responsibilities. If people don't accept that, I'm not going to bother with them. There are plenty of genuinely oppressed people that should get my attention instead.
Sorry.
Not how law and morality works. You don't get to ignore fraud victims because you personally relate more closely to battered wives, any more than you can commit one of those offences more easily than the other out of personal preference.
and with rights do NOT come responsibilities. My right not to be assaulted or murdered is independent of anything I do.
Sorry.
Completely irrelevant to my point. Sorry (for the last time).
A 100% answer to your point, if you were not too thick to see it. Unless you seriously think that my right not to be murdered is contingent on my carrying out some responsibility. Do you? If you do, what is the bare minimum I have to do to validate the right?
Sorry.
On the other hand my right not to be incarcerated is contingent on not committing a crime. My right to drive a car is contingent on passing a test and obeying the traffic laws. My, or more likely my children's, right to a specific education is contingent on proper behaviour at school. The law will say what your responsibilities are. It's absolutely normal.
As I said above I'm perfectly cool about banning Koran burning in principle. My only concern is that it would make bad law. How would you determine the right level of hurt and so on? But I don't care about the rights of those guys in Sweden. They can look after themselves, including not burning the book in the first place.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
PS re running the reds -
1. How the **** am I supposed to know? 2. How the **** is it OK to do that when there are people *on the bloody crossing, right in the middle*? I had cyclists passingf within a foot of me on all sides.
It's insane. I've never heard of such a thing and wouldn't have believed it if I did.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
TBF the right are always sayingf we needn't bother because things are massively worse ...
I know I was caught with a bloody knife standing over the body of the guy who bled to death but I definitely didn't kill him, because, in the past, before I was alive, other people bled to death of natural causes. That couldn't have been me, therefore this guy isn't either. I rest my case.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
PS re running the reds -
1. How the **** am I supposed to know? 2. How the **** is it OK to do that when there are people *on the bloody crossing, right in the middle*? I had cyclists passingf within a foot of me on all sides.
It's insane. I've never heard of such a thing and wouldn't have believed it if I did.
It's controversial, for sure. The front of the pack never runs a red, but the tail end does. I've done it a couple of times and stayed at the front for that reason.
It's policed as a political march, so is legal apparently. They usually have a few cyclists block pedestrian crossings to ensure no one gets hurt, and mandate a very slow speed (too slow for me!)
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Because they are fanatics, zealots. Whatever you do will never be enough.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
Was Martin Luther a wanker for nailing his faeces to the door?
Ok he'd have been a wanker (or equivalent medieval insult) for doing that, but people also thought he was a wanker for nailing his theses to the door too.
In a free society people have the right to be wankers. And some people need to be, such as Luther, to challenge assumptions and enable progress.
A newspaper like the Grauniad opposing liberalism and freedom is more of a threat to liberalism than people abusing their freedoms: which they have every right to do.
If people are being wankers, roll your eyes at them and ignore them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. Certainly don't abolish valuable freedoms.
On the other hand, it's completely OK for the Guardian to say they are wankers for burning the Koran, so long as they say that being wanker is not illegal.
(And, of course, we're falling into the trap set by both sets of wankers. They both want a fight. We don't have to give it to them.)
Indeed, if they're saying that they are wankers but have a right to be wankers then that is OK.
However the phrase "there must be boundaries" is alarming, although of course its in quotation marks. No, there must not be boundaries. Yes its wankerish, but no its not illegal, nor should it be. Free speech with boundaries is not free speech. The limit is not offending others, its breaking the law by inciting people to violence, which is not what his happening here.
Where's the pro-liberty balance? Reading the article it is all one-sided people wanting to criminalise free speech, and while its all in quotation marks giving the Grauniad plausible deniability that they are not saying that themselves, the implication hangs heavy in the air that it is what they think.
Where is the alternative viewpoint, or a comparable headline or lead article, saying how precious and important free speech is? That it doesn't matter if people are wankers, they have a right to be and we must not change that? Unless I'm mistaken, on that, there only seems to be tumbleweed.
On the cost of electric cars in the US: FWIW, the lowest-cost Chevrolet Bolt now has a list price of 26.5K. But how much it will actually cost the buyer depends very much on whether they qualify for a subsidy: https://ev.pse.com/ (And, of course, taxes.)
Since I am not in the market for a car, I can't give you more details. (Which would vary from state to state.)
But I can give you this generality: In recent years, legislators here have been trying to find ways to subsidize inexpensive electric cars. (I don't know to what extent they have succeeded.)
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Things are great for you and me, but then (without exaggeration) you and I would probably commit suicide rather than live the life of the people who make our iphones for us, and (also without exaggeration) there are billions of Indians and Africans to whom the life of the iphone makers woud look like heaven. Now, it's possible that we can make nano bots to make the iphones, but people work on a macro level and want macro houses and cars and roads to drive the cars on and airports and planes to fly about in. Standing still looks just about achievable at the moment, but why should the billions agree to a standstill?
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
PS re running the reds -
1. How the **** am I supposed to know? 2. How the **** is it OK to do that when there are people *on the bloody crossing, right in the middle*? I had cyclists passingf within a foot of me on all sides.
It's insane. I've never heard of such a thing and wouldn't have believed it if I did.
It's controversial, for sure. The front of the pack never runs a red, but the tail end does. I've done it a couple of times and stayed at the front for that reason.
It's policed as a political march, so is legal apparently. They usually have a few cyclists block pedestrian crossings to ensure no one gets hurt, and mandate a very slow speed (too slow for me!)
I think it must be the same lot, grinning all over their faces - if I had panicked, several people would have been hurt as well as me.
No, that last, blocking pedestrian crossings, didn't happen for me. Definitely not. They were going pretty fast, too.
If you have anything to do with them - just tell them to stop it. They're not a ****ing old style Orange March.
Edit: that is exactly the sort of thing that would make me go out and buy several packs of carpet tacks if I ever knew when and where the same lot would be.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Because they are fanatics, zealots. Whatever you do will never be enough.
Tell me you have never left Europe, without telling me you have never left Europe.
FAILURE: Mark Zuckerberg's Threads is now the biggest failure in online history. No other platform has lost as many users as quickly as Threads. cnn.com/2023/08/03/tec…
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
The Romans were at the centre of a vast network of trade routes, taking from each territory what was best made, mined, or grown from that territory. I find the idea that they would have attempted to cultivate vines in the frozen wastes of Yorkshire because they were dying of thirst to be risible. Even if there were difficulties with importing wine from the continent they could still have quite easily confined their vinicultural efforts to the South of England, and transported the wine oop North by road.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Because they are fanatics, zealots. Whatever you do will never be enough.
Tell me you have never left Europe, without telling me you have never left Europe.
Ok, that one trip to Florida.
It's weird how Taz has interpreted the progress we have made on reducing emissions, and the increasing ease of doing in the future, as a reason to stop?!
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
Seems like an odd law if the guy in the articulated lorry coming through the green lights at the cross roads doesn't know. I hav a vision of hundreds of naked squashed bodies and buckled wheels piled up in the middle of the road
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
The Romans were at the centre of a vast network of trade routes, taking from each territory what was best made, mined, or grown from that territory. I find the idea that they would have attempted to cultivate vines in the frozen wastes of Yorkshire because they were dying of thirst to be risible. Even if there were difficulties with importing wine from the continent they could still have quite easily confined their vinicultural efforts to the South of England, and transported the wine oop North by road.
Road transport far too inefficient. Take it by sea to (for instance) Brough on Humber, for York.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
Was Martin Luther a wanker for nailing his faeces to the door?
Ok he'd have been a wanker (or equivalent medieval insult) for doing that, but people also thought he was a wanker for nailing his theses to the door too.
In a free society people have the right to be wankers. And some people need to be, such as Luther, to challenge assumptions and enable progress.
A newspaper like the Grauniad opposing liberalism and freedom is more of a threat to liberalism than people abusing their freedoms: which they have every right to do.
If people are being wankers, roll your eyes at them and ignore them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. Certainly don't abolish valuable freedoms.
As that act of Martin Luther triggered wars that resulted in up to 20 million deaths including one third of the German population, I'm not sure a successful banning might have better.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
Seems like an odd law if the guy in the articulated lorry coming through the green lights at the cross roads doesn't know. I hav a vision of hundreds of naked squashed bodies and buckled wheels piled up in the middle of the road
Pedestrian crossing, so red lights on both - but, ny the same token, how are the pedestrians to know? As in my case.
FAILURE: Mark Zuckerberg's Threads is now the biggest failure in online history. No other platform has lost as many users as quickly as Threads. cnn.com/2023/08/03/tec…
I signed up for it, never used it. What was bonkers about it was it was predicated on being signed up to Instagram, which is a witless photo sharing platform, with zero crossover to wanting to participate in The Great Debate.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Things are great for you and me, but then (without exaggeration) you and I would probably commit suicide rather than live the life of the people who make our iphones for us, and (also without exaggeration) there are billions of Indians and Africans to whom the life of the iphone makers woud look like heaven. Now, it's possible that we can make nano bots to make the iphones, but people work on a macro level and want macro houses and cars and roads to drive the cars on and airports and planes to fly about in. Standing still looks just about achievable at the moment, but why should the billions agree to a standstill?
Those people making the iPhones are living massively better lives than their parents. They aren't in rural China living subsistence lives.
There's an amazing NPR series where they interview textile workers in Bangladesh. 19 year old girls working machines for 12 hours a day in horrible conditions.
These are people that we worry about in the West. But all they can talk about is how happy they are they are no longer living on a farm, and sure the work is boring, but they share a flat with their friends, and they can buy make up, and they're never hungry.
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
The Romans were at the centre of a vast network of trade routes, taking from each territory what was best made, mined, or grown from that territory. I find the idea that they would have attempted to cultivate vines in the frozen wastes of Yorkshire because they were dying of thirst to be risible. Even if there were difficulties with importing wine from the continent they could still have quite easily confined their vinicultural efforts to the South of England, and transported the wine oop North by road.
Road transport far too inefficient. Take it by sea to (for instance) Brough on Humber, for York.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
I don't think it is. As someone who believe in free speech I think you should be able to do so, but here is the counter argument: I am also an atheist yet I find the idea of burning a Bible of Koran in public unreasonably insulting to those who hold those religious views no matter how barking I think they are, even though I think I have the right to do so.
It isn't even about "mocking religion" . People burning Korans are arseholes who want to stir up trouble - in fact they are on the same side as Isis. I'm an atheist and I don't have any problem with a law banning burning religious texts.
Besides, there are all kinds of things we aren't allowed to do. I live in a country (there are many) where desecrating flags is illegal. Is that woke madness too?
I think banning burning books/religious texts and banning desecrating flags are equally ridiculous.
The absence of the above shite is one of the things Britain does right.
OK last time I was in Britain it wasn't allowed to walk down the street naked - which is an infringement on people's freedom of expression that has far less justification than banning burning holy books, but not many of you are manning barricades about it.
You are allowed to walk down the street naked
You're not. A charge of offending public decency would usually stick. Look what happened to this bloke:
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
There was a naked bike ride in Edinburgh a few weeks ago. Wonder how that was legal?
(No, I wasn't there).
Don't care if they were naked. The demo to 'save the streets for cyclists' nearly killed me when I was in the middle of the green man crossing on South Bridge - they just ignored the red. I have hated that kind of self-important shit in Lycra ever since, so someone without Lycra somehow seems an improvement.
I'm sorry you were nearly killed. Did you report to the police?
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
Seems like an odd law if the guy in the articulated lorry coming through the green lights at the cross roads doesn't know. I hav a vision of hundreds of naked squashed bodies and buckled wheels piled up in the middle of the road
Yep - I don't like it very much at all. The police seem to be aware and chill with it though.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
Things are great for you and me, but then (without exaggeration) you and I would probably commit suicide rather than live the life of the people who make our iphones for us, and (also without exaggeration) there are billions of Indians and Africans to whom the life of the iphone makers woud look like heaven. Now, it's possible that we can make nano bots to make the iphones, but people work on a macro level and want macro houses and cars and roads to drive the cars on and airports and planes to fly about in. Standing still looks just about achievable at the moment, but why should the billions agree to a standstill?
FAILURE: Mark Zuckerberg's Threads is now the biggest failure in online history. No other platform has lost as many users as quickly as Threads. cnn.com/2023/08/03/tec…
I signed up for it, never used it. What was bonkers about it was it was predicated on being signed up to Instagram, which is a witless photo sharing platform, with zero crossover to wanting to participate in The Great Debate.
Musk vs Zuck = Dumb vs Dumber
Musk is not dumb
Threads had multiple problems from the off, which - at the time - I detailed on here. It was doomed from the get-go
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
Was Martin Luther a wanker for nailing his faeces to the door?
Ok he'd have been a wanker (or equivalent medieval insult) for doing that, but people also thought he was a wanker for nailing his theses to the door too.
In a free society people have the right to be wankers. And some people need to be, such as Luther, to challenge assumptions and enable progress.
A newspaper like the Grauniad opposing liberalism and freedom is more of a threat to liberalism than people abusing their freedoms: which they have every right to do.
If people are being wankers, roll your eyes at them and ignore them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. Certainly don't abolish valuable freedoms.
As that act of Martin Luther triggered wars that resulted in up to 20 million deaths including one third of the German population, I'm not sure a successful banning might have better.
The act of Martin Luther helped trigger the enlightenment.
Yes some retrograde and illiberal people were willing to fight the concept of the enlightenment. That is a fight that was worth having though, the world would not have been better for avoiding those deaths and remaining pre-enlightenment.
Deaths != a cause is bad. Some fights are worth having.
The UK was right to stand up to the Nazis in WWII. Those fighting for freedom were right to do so versus the unenlightened who wanted repression. The Ukrainians are right to fight the Russians.
A successful banning of Luther would have been much, much worse.
A successful termination of our enlightened free speech, that millions have died to attain in the past, and then millions more have died protect in the past, would not be better.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
There isn't a climate emergency. The change in terminology could have been predicted, though. Less so the change from global warming to climate change. Next the line is bound to be do this or go extinct.
To try to stop the climate changing is to be a Cnut. (In the monarchist sense.)
At least we have got to the stage where people accept it is happening, and will continue to do so.
All you have left is arguments over semantics.
The positive externalities of mitigation are worth it, even if they don't have a big impact on global emissions and the rate at which temperature increases.
Investment in adaptation is almost certainly worth it, particularly for flooding on the east coast and air conditioning in hospitals.
Yes. We need to invest in mitigation AND reduce CO2 output AND improve energy efficiency AND investigate carbon capture AND reduce methane output AND… We’re past simple solutions. We need all the solutions.
There are no solutions that will be acceptable in a democracy because people will not accept a mandated decline in living standard. Therefore there will be no solutions
How about the solutions that do not require a decline in living standards?
- More renewables in energy generation -> less dependence on (suddenly very expensive) gas from dodgy places - More efficient appliances -> lower costs of running those appliances - Better insulation -> warmer homes at lower heating cost (plus removal of cold patches with mould etc) - EVs -> better cars with lower running costs
Someone the other day mentioned LED lighting. Well, it's just better than incandescent, isn't it? Many more colour options, cooler running*, lasts longer, obsolescence of even worse stuff like flurorescent tubes...
*I once burned my foot on a halogen bulb in a bedside lamp when reading in bed turned into something more energetic
I am not against any of those but we both know the climate change zealots want more than that
They demand an end to personal transportation for one They demand we all go vegan for two
But climate change zealots are nowhere near power.
Neither of those two things are going to happen before the climate apocalypse* and then it's too late and pointless anyway.
*by which I mean they are election losers right up until the point where (if it ever happens) the effects of climate change are so severe that people, in general, would actually want these things
I should state at this point I am absolutely relaxed about climate change, purely because by the time it becomes critical I will be dead as will be my family. I doubt I am alone in that.
Which on the one hand means that the rhetoric can be ramped up and no one will be any the wiser, while on the other as you say no one *really* is invested.
It comes down to will no one think of the children which is always a tricky ask.
Like many my son and his wife have decided to be childfree. Given he they are in their 30's by the time he dies will likely be 2080 at the latest. What is being asked therefore is "think of other peoples children"
I expect things to be pretty shit by 2050
Give us some f'rinstances.
Hot summers wet winters fires everywhere
Oh no!!!
Sounds like a pretty normal year to me if I am honest
Ahem
Never trust a chart that lacks a scale.
It is like a Lib Dem "winning here" bar chart.
You can almost here Kay burley screaming that Edinburgh is literally ablaze!
It's Met Office data, graphic put together by National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Reading Uni.
But I appreciate you lot don't have much time for experts.
The choice of colour is deliberately designed to alarm idiots like you. I have zero time for 'experts' who produce a graph without a scale.
The late chap in a house round the back from me (not a million miles from Edinburgh) was a keen met person. He kept continuous records for decades. I remember seeing his graph of the running average for the last few years about 10-12 years ago. It was a near perfect hockey stick in shape.
1850, low point of the Dalton minimum. There's a reason they start the chart here.
That's why I was talking about the hockey stick graph, which relies solely on the last few years' runnign average. Flat for decades then up as one would expect from CO2 levels.
Where did the Co2 come from in the Early Middle Ages when the Vikings were growing Barley in Southern Greenland and Europes wine growing region extended 500 kms further north than today?
Europe's wine growing region ends at - about - London today. 500 km further North takes you well into Scotland.
If you look at Germany today, we get wine produced from about half way up. If you stretch 500 km North of there, you get meaningfully above Oslo and Stockholm.
I'm sure Europe's wine growing region stretched further North than previously during the Medieval Warm Period, but I'd be staggered if it was anywhere near 500km more than now.
500km north of Derbyshire gets you to somewhere north of Stirling.
I'm confident they never made wine that far north in Roman times.
Edit - there is evidence of Roman viticulture in North Thoresby, Lincs (there is a modern vineyard not far away at Sowerby). That's the most northern one I know of.
"Meet our latest pride and joy, the Elsa Pink 2022. It's more than a wine – it's a tribute to our bright and sparky daughter, capturing her vibrant spirit and enthusiasm in every drop. Each bottle radiates the same charming, magnetic energy she exudes, making it a celebration of family, love, and laughter."
Also I am not convinced they have got the hang of the whole viticulture thang, all their wine pages show a top-fruit (prob apple but it's out of focus) orchard in blossom. Avoid.
There's a vineyard just north of Doncaster (Summerhouse, I think), and one further north at Nun Monkton. https://yorkshireheart.com/
Also one in Holmfirth, but I think that's really just for the lolz.
Yes, but you have to try their output to know whether to take them seriously. I had some madeleine angevin white from Dartmouth the other day which took me back to the early 1980s, it was so disgusting.
How "serious" were the alleged vineyards in the Medieval Warm Period, given that transporting the finest Chilean produce wasn't exactly that easy at the time?
I don’t think they were alleged, there is archeological and historical evidence of their existence. It shouldn’t matter that the Roman warm period and medieval warm periods happened - the current rise in temps is very different.
The point was that if you cannot transport goods around easily, you just have to accept whatever rubbish you can produce locally.
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
Speaking of desperation...
Not desperate at all. Have you any idea how difficult and dangerous it is transporting a cargo from Portugal/France/Madeira to England in a sailing ship with no engine? People were doing it in those days to the extent that the basic unit of a ton, derives from a (liquid) tun of wine, because that was the default cargo, because the demand was there, because the native produce was either non existent or unutterably disgusting.
The Romans were at the centre of a vast network of trade routes, taking from each territory what was best made, mined, or grown from that territory. I find the idea that they would have attempted to cultivate vines in the frozen wastes of Yorkshire because they were dying of thirst to be risible. Even if there were difficulties with importing wine from the continent they could still have quite easily confined their vinicultural efforts to the South of England, and transported the wine oop North by road.
Yes.
1. I was talking about the claimed medieval warm period, not the Romans.
2. At least one of us is a professional, paid for, made a living out of it, ancient historian. I am guessing that's only one of us. "centre of a vast network of trade routes" my arse, what was Roman Britain at the centre of?
3. I grow a lot of citrus fruit, in England. It's a shit climate to do it, and 95% of the citrus I consume (and all the nice citrus) comes from abroad via Tesco. People grow stuff for fun in marginal climates just to see if they can.
Find evidence of a Roman ship full of amphorae full of English wine on its way to foreign markets and get back to me.
FAILURE: Mark Zuckerberg's Threads is now the biggest failure in online history. No other platform has lost as many users as quickly as Threads. cnn.com/2023/08/03/tec…
I signed up for it, never used it. What was bonkers about it was it was predicated on being signed up to Instagram, which is a witless photo sharing platform, with zero crossover to wanting to participate in The Great Debate.
Musk vs Zuck = Dumb vs Dumber
Musk is not dumb
Threads had multiple problems from the off, which - at the time - I detailed on here. It was doomed from the get-go
He certainly isn't dumb - he knew buying twitter at the price he'd offered was a mistake and tried to back out of it, which shows some smarts. Less so that he was forced into buying it at the original price.
As someone who doesn't use twitter but used to scroll through it a bit, it just seems like as long as it doesn't collapse and stop working entirely it'll retain first place, since people can't be bothered to go somewhere else.
There's a good explanation of how development has helped the poor in nations like Indonesia in Michael Shellenberger's "Apocalyse Never". And how the Green religion in developed nations is holding many of them back.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
Ahem; the numbers commuting by bike has increased markedly in the UK in the last quarter century. Now, it's still small in the general scale of things (and mostly concentrated in London), but it is definitely increasing.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
The graph demonstrates a strong correlation between finding the roads dangerous and not cycling, which is what you would expect. People in the UK find it dangerous; they don't cycle.
Well, he's right people won't like it for that reason, and Goodwin almost certainly take things way further than is justified because he likes getting attention, ubt I have to say having attended such things they are not very useful a lot of the time. They could be, but often people come across as worried they'll say the wrong thing, and hyper focused on race as a result, rather than getting into really thinking about the issues.
People won’t like it because it’s Goodwin but it’s true. I’d go further: the evidence shows that it doesn’t work. If anything, it makes people more racist.
https://nitter.net/GoodwinMJ Evidence on anti-racism training is mixed at best. Major recent review concluded we now spend BILLIONS on "diversity training" which either makes no difference or makes things worse. Everybody in research knows this. They just go along with it bc don't want to call out the new religion https://nitter.net/residentadviser/status/1687104437352026113#m
There's a good explanation of how development has helped the poor in nations like Indonesia in Michael Shellenberger's "Apocalyse Never". And how the Green religion in developed nations is holding many of them back.
I read a fantastic development economics book about twenty years ago, that started "There's only one thing worse for a developing country than well intentioned western aid, and that's oil."
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
Someone: I am a CO2 exhaler
Bart: I am an an oxygen/nitrogen inhaler but I respect your CO2 exhalation even if I completely disagree with it. Furthermore blah, blah, and indeed blah. You aren't masquerading that CO2 exhalation is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-air fanatics. Blah.
Well. I’ve rediscovered cash after more than a decade. In the Balkans. On holiday.
My main takeaway? It’s a bloody stupid, time-consuming, expensive ‘system’.
Who would design a system now that requires the bloke who is selling you goods/service to have change just so you can buy something? Who needs you to visit a cash machine 500 yards plus away? Whose main form of trade can literally be blown away in the sea breeze?
Fuck this. Human life is and will be better when we can rid ourselves of this antiquated nonsense worldwide.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
Someone: I am a CO2 exhaler
Bart: I am an an oxygen/nitrogen inhaler but I respect your CO2 exhalation even if I completely disagree with it. Furthermore blah, blah, and indeed blah. You aren't masquerading that CO2 exhalation is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-air fanatics. Blah.
And so on.
I'm just trying to gently point out to him that a large chunk of people in the UK don't cycle because they find the roads dangerous - their freedom of movement has been constrained by motorists.
Sure, some won't because they are lazy. But we shouldn't let the lazy dictate terms.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
Ahem; the numbers commuting by bike has increased markedly in the UK in the last quarter century. Now, it's still small in the general scale of things (and mostly concentrated in London), but it is definitely increasing.
Oh, absolutely, they have markedly increased on a proportionate like-for-like basis of cycling stats versus cycling stats.
They have not markedly increased as a percentage of total travel.
As far as total km* travelled, cycling has in the past quarter of a century risen from a low of less than 1% of total km travelled ... to a new high of less than 1% of total km travelled.
* or miles, using km for international comparison purposes.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
That transportation part is going to come down too. Ditto buildings are codes are improved and more people use heat pumps.
It's genuinely all good news. I can really see us halving emissions again, with improving quality of life.
The threat is to solving our problems is us thinking this is all some kind of emergency that provokes a backlash.
Almost no problems are solved with revolutions: iteration is all.
Not exciting enough.
People do need pushing, there's a place for the really urgent demanding types, but without a clear eye on what has been achieved and is already set to be achieved it can hardly be taken fully seriously.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
There is no other realistic way of travelling the world than by air, beyond 600 mile trips. Ergo the key is to develop zero carbon flights. The idea that we should stop flying is unrealistic. But, how do we incentivise the development of clean aviation?
Well. I’ve rediscovered cash after more than a decade. In the Balkans. On holiday.
My main takeaway? It’s a bloody stupid, time-consuming, expensive ‘system’.
Who would design a system now that requires the bloke who is selling you goods/service to have change just so you can buy something? Who needs you to visit a cash machine 500 yards plus away? Whose main form of trade can literally be blown away in the sea breeze?
Fuck this. Human life is and will be better when we can rid ourselves of this antiquated nonsense worldwide.
Man who fulminates about antiquated nonsense does so from "the Balkans".
I'd hop on a BEA turboprop and leg it back to blighty, if they accept traveller's cheques at the aerodrome.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
What if it's not possible to increase the standard of living of 8 billion people while reducing the global impact of humanity on the environment?
It is.
Don't underestimate human ingenuity. The one thing worse than Luddites is Malthusians.
How many more cars than today are we talking about? How many more flights? How much more meat will be consumed? How much more food will we have to take out of the oceans?
Thomas Malthus, is that you?
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
Microbe in laboratory jar, population doubling every day, on day when jar is at 50% capacity:
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
Sure.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
It's weird because we have already fixed the problem. We just need to implement it against a little political opposition. It's lung cancer and smoking, round two.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
You're completely right for once, electric cars and electric buses and electric trains etc are the solution. Combined with clean electricity they are zero carbon, so they are the solution. The sole solution.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
My argument for cycling is less about emissions and more about other problems like air pollution, road wear, and congestion though.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Yes, and I respect your opinion even if I completely disagree with it. You aren't masquerading that cycling is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-car fanatics. That's why we can have an intelligent conversation with differing opinions because you aren't claiming something patently absurd as those who say cycling resolves the climate does.
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
Ahem; the numbers commuting by bike has increased markedly in the UK in the last quarter century. Now, it's still small in the general scale of things (and mostly concentrated in London), but it is definitely increasing.
Oh, absolutely, they have markedly increased on a proportionate like-for-like basis of cycling stats versus cycling stats.
They have not markedly increased as a percentage of total travel.
As far as total km* travelled, cycling has in the past quarter of a century risen from a low of less than 1% of total km travelled ... to a new high of less than 1% of total km travelled.
* or miles, using km for international comparison purposes.
It's never going to be a big share on a "percentage of miles basis". It probably isn't even a big share in the Netherlands.
But it doesn't mean it can't make a difference in urban areas.
Remarkable headline in The Guardian. Sweden apparently has “extraordinarily liberal free speech laws” - because they allow people to burn the Koran. No, what they have is the freedom to mock and criticise religion. It’s called “the Enlightenment”. We used to do it, too
The Guardian are such wankers.
For those who keep asking what WOKE is: it's horseshit like this.
When did you last publicly burn one ?
Jesus fucking Christ what an insultingly stupid question
Not at all. Casino could have said the people publicly burning the Koran purely to make others unhappy are wankers. But he didn't.
Personally I can't think of anything more wankist than what those guys are doing.
True.
Mind you, I do wonder how small, tiny and afraid your God has to be, that a bunch of tossers being nasty with an nth generation copy of His Book is even noticeable.
Comments
But there's no tradition of unthreatening Koran-burning here. If there were, I'd be OK with it being allowed to continue.
"The proposed ban on incitement to "religious hatred" makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself; and that would be pretty absurd, when you consider that the Bill's intention is to fight Islamophobia."
- writing in The Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2005
On the other hand some Muslims can be almost as bad.
*ah, my coat*
and with rights do NOT come responsibilities. My right not to be assaulted or murdered is independent of anything I do.
Sorry.
As for politics. Nothing much matters. And what does doesn't matter much.
Love to you all.
Later.
https://twitter.com/Falconbricks/status/1687117460921794560
So evidence of old vineyards doesn't mean much really. It might just have been desperation rather than some kind of Mediterranean climate.
If it turns out banning wilful Koran burning would also impact the free speech of the much better people than them, I might accept the Koran burning. But I would be doing that for the rights of the much better people, not the rights of the bastards burning the Koran.
Clearly people who were correct to express their foreboding of doom aren't around to discuss it afterwards.
I've always though Loyd Grossman was putting it on deliberately, but I don't know and don't care.
The most recent change that made a large difference in Britain was it getting much wetter some time during the Bronze Age. There's plenty of good evidence for that.
Sorry.
On the other hand some Muslims can be almost as bad.
*ah, my coat*
But to drink with youjr high class meal ...
Ok he'd have been a wanker (or equivalent medieval insult) for doing that, but people also thought he was a wanker for nailing his theses to the door too.
In a free society people have the right to be wankers. And some people need to be, such as Luther, to challenge assumptions and enable progress.
A newspaper like the Grauniad opposing liberalism and freedom is more of a threat to liberalism than people abusing their freedoms: which they have every right to do.
If people are being wankers, roll your eyes at them and ignore them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity. Certainly don't abolish valuable freedoms.
In any case - he was beaten up in St Ives. Last time I looked, it weas in England.
(No, I wasn't there).
Haven't taken communion for 40 odd years, but Cof E wine is South African port I think - presumably because unfortified red wine is unpalatable to those not used to it. I have always remembered the bit in 1984 where O'Brien gives W and J wine and they are disappointed how thin and bitter it is.
I want to ride my bike
The past fifty years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of people living developed world lifestyles. More people eat well. More people survive childbirth.
Politics excepted, the world has never been in better shape. We now have the technology to provide *all* of humanity's needs from renewable sources. We have battery technology. We can keep homes warm or cold.
We've even solved the problem of the world's population growing out of control.
In time, we'll solve the long-distance travel problem. And you know what: maybe it'll be more by hyperloop than by planes. And that's great! Whatever works. Maybe it'll be by fanprops. Maybe synthetic fuel. Maybe battery powered planes.
The challenges the world faces are not from real emergencies - absent places like Ukraine - but an unwillingness to listen to the concerns of, and empathize with, our fellow human beings.
You can ride it if you like
But - on further reflection - wasn't it only the celebrant who took a sip of the wine? In which case even a small amount of manky Chateau Scunthorpe would do perfectly well to keep the ritual year rolling along.
The past fifty doublings have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of microbes living developed laboratory jar lifestyles.
FYI If that was Critical Mass - they have permission from the council and the police to keep together in a big group and run the reds. There are usually a few councillors in there keeping an eye on it.
Surely these cyclists must have footwear on ? Wouldn’t it be too painful on the foot pedalling with no protection on the bottom of the foot.
But here's the thing. We're not running out of resources!
In fact, quite the opposite. We're successfully moving away from burning shit to power our lives, and moving to capturing solar energy through wind turbines and panels. How insanely great is that?
We've already - in the UK - stopped burning coal. And the cost of solar and wind and batteries is only going in one direction. So we'll soon stop burning gas. And our petrol usage will shrink.
Why aren't people saying "this is amazing!"
Instead they are claiming things are worse, when they are obviously massively better than they have been.
(And, of course, we're falling into the trap set by both sets of wankers. They both want a fight. We don't have to give it to them.)
As I said above I'm perfectly cool about banning Koran burning in principle. My only concern is that it would make bad law. How would you determine the right level of hurt and so on? But I don't care about the rights of those guys in Sweden. They can look after themselves, including not burning the book in the first place.
1. How the **** am I supposed to know?
2. How the **** is it OK to do that when there are people *on the bloody crossing, right in the middle*? I had cyclists passingf within a foot of me on all sides.
It's insane. I've never heard of such a thing and wouldn't have believed it if I did.
Transport is the last big chunk of carbon emissions where we haven't made much progress, and we are already well on the way to electric cars, electric buses, trams, electrification of trains and - dare I say it - cycling for shorter journeys.
There is a really good OBR report on this: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/Emissions-working-paper.pdf
It's policed as a political march, so is legal apparently. They usually have a few cyclists block pedestrian crossings to ensure no one gets hurt, and mandate a very slow speed (too slow for me!)
However the phrase "there must be boundaries" is alarming, although of course its in quotation marks. No, there must not be boundaries. Yes its wankerish, but no its not illegal, nor should it be. Free speech with boundaries is not free speech. The limit is not offending others, its breaking the law by inciting people to violence, which is not what his happening here.
Where's the pro-liberty balance? Reading the article it is all one-sided people wanting to criminalise free speech, and while its all in quotation marks giving the Grauniad plausible deniability that they are not saying that themselves, the implication hangs heavy in the air that it is what they think.
Where is the alternative viewpoint, or a comparable headline or lead article, saying how precious and important free speech is? That it doesn't matter if people are wankers, they have a right to be and we must not change that? Unless I'm mistaken, on that, there only seems to be tumbleweed.
Since I am not in the market for a car, I can't give you more details. (Which would vary from state to state.)
But I can give you this generality: In recent years, legislators here have been trying to find ways to subsidize inexpensive electric cars. (I don't know to what extent they have succeeded.)
No, that last, blocking pedestrian crossings, didn't happen for me. Definitely not. They were going pretty fast, too.
If you have anything to do with them - just tell them to stop it. They're not a ****ing old style Orange March.
Edit: that is exactly the sort of thing that would make me go out and buy several packs of carpet tacks if I ever knew when and where the same lot would be.
Ok, that one trip to Florida.
FAILURE: Mark Zuckerberg's Threads is now the biggest failure in online history. No other platform has lost as many users as quickly as Threads.
cnn.com/2023/08/03/tec…
https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1687187829477040128?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
That transportation part is going to come down too. Ditto buildings are codes are improved and more people use heat pumps.
It's genuinely all good news. I can really see us halving emissions again, with improving quality of life.
The threat is to solving our problems is us thinking this is all some kind of emergency that provokes a backlash.
Almost no problems are solved with revolutions: iteration is all.
Cycling of course is fun, so throw that in the mix if you want to, for recreational purposes, but not as a relevant solution to the climate since it represents not even a significant percentage of transportation on any country in the planet, even after more than half a century of extremely heavily promoting it in the likes of the Netherlands its still an almost inconsequential sub-10% of km travelled. And we need to be making 100% of travel clean, not below 10% of travel.
But electric cars? Yes, they eliminate the climate problem in its entirety and eliminate any reason to be concerned about driving. Problem is solved, you are completely right. 👍
The one things that's not yet technologically solved is clean aviation. It will be over time. Its why we do not need to be cutting flights either, we need to be incentivising clean aviation technology in the same way as we incentivised clean automobile technology, until the solution for that exists too.
https://www.roman-britain.co.uk/places/petuaria/
Edit: but that strengthens your point.
Musk vs Zuck = Dumb vs Dumber
There's an amazing NPR series where they interview textile workers in Bangladesh. 19 year old girls working machines for 12 hours a day in horrible conditions.
These are people that we worry about in the West. But all they can talk about is how happy they are they are no longer living on a farm, and sure the work is boring, but they share a flat with their friends, and they can buy make up, and they're never hungry.
What you see as hell, they see as progress.
lol
This is well worth reading.
Threads had multiple problems from the off, which - at the time - I detailed on here. It was doomed from the get-go
(Dunno if you actually have to pay list price for one. Which would be unusual in US car markets, most of the time.)
Yes some retrograde and illiberal people were willing to fight the concept of the enlightenment. That is a fight that was worth having though, the world would not have been better for avoiding those deaths and remaining pre-enlightenment.
Deaths != a cause is bad. Some fights are worth having.
The UK was right to stand up to the Nazis in WWII.
Those fighting for freedom were right to do so versus the unenlightened who wanted repression.
The Ukrainians are right to fight the Russians.
A successful banning of Luther would have been much, much worse.
A successful termination of our enlightened free speech, that millions have died to attain in the past, and then millions more have died protect in the past, would not be better.
I think you suggested that people weren't scared of cycling in the UK? Here ya go:
Cricket trivia question:
Why was 23rd December 1981 an important day for Geoff Boycott?
As for your graph, it doesn't prove anything about "scared". If people choose to drive 2km because they want to, because they don't want to get wet, because they're lazy, because its convenient, because its easy, or any other reason - that is their choice. And in a free society, their choice should be respected.
Indeed the fact that the UK is well, well below the line suggests that choice, more than fear, is the reason.
Furthermore as I said, people are dishonest in polls, and virtue signal. This is well known. The percentage who claim they'll vote in polls is far more than the percentage who actually do. Given people are choosing not to ride a bike, as demonstrated by the fact the UK dot is well underneath the line of the chart, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of people are saying "its too dangerous" as a more virtuous reason why they don't than "I'm too lazy".
1. I was talking about the claimed medieval warm period, not the Romans.
2. At least one of us is a professional, paid for, made a living out of it, ancient historian. I am guessing that's only one of us. "centre of a vast network of trade routes" my arse, what was Roman Britain at the centre of?
3. I grow a lot of citrus fruit, in England. It's a shit climate to do it, and 95% of the citrus I consume (and all the nice citrus) comes from abroad via Tesco. People grow stuff for fun in marginal climates just to see if they can.
Find evidence of a Roman ship full of amphorae full of English wine on its way to foreign markets and get back to me.
As someone who doesn't use twitter but used to scroll through it a bit, it just seems like as long as it doesn't collapse and stop working entirely it'll retain first place, since people can't be bothered to go somewhere else.
People won’t like it because it’s Goodwin but it’s true. I’d go further: the evidence shows that it doesn’t work. If anything, it makes people more racist.
https://nitter.net/GoodwinMJ
Evidence on anti-racism training is mixed at best. Major recent review concluded we now spend BILLIONS on "diversity training" which either makes no difference or makes things worse. Everybody in research knows this. They just go along with it bc don't want to call out the new religion
https://nitter.net/residentadviser/status/1687104437352026113#m
Bart: I am an an oxygen/nitrogen inhaler but I respect your CO2 exhalation even if I completely disagree with it. Furthermore blah, blah, and indeed blah. You aren't masquerading that CO2 exhalation is the solution to climate change unlike other anti-air fanatics. Blah.
And so on.
My main takeaway? It’s a bloody stupid, time-consuming, expensive ‘system’.
Who would design a system now that requires the bloke who is selling you goods/service to have change just so you can buy something? Who needs you to visit a cash machine 500 yards plus away? Whose main form of trade can literally be blown away in the sea breeze?
Fuck this. Human life is and will be better when we can rid ourselves of this antiquated nonsense worldwide.
Sure, some won't because they are lazy. But we shouldn't let the lazy dictate terms.
They have not markedly increased as a percentage of total travel.
As far as total km* travelled, cycling has in the past quarter of a century risen from a low of less than 1% of total km travelled ... to a new high of less than 1% of total km travelled.
* or miles, using km for international comparison purposes.
People do need pushing, there's a place for the really urgent demanding types, but without a clear eye on what has been achieved and is already set to be achieved it can hardly be taken fully seriously.
I'd hop on a BEA turboprop and leg it back to blighty, if they accept traveller's cheques at the aerodrome.
But it doesn't mean it can't make a difference in urban areas.
There's a wealth of data here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/travel-patterns-and-trends-london
New Thread
Mind you, I do wonder how small, tiny and afraid your God has to be, that a bunch of tossers being nasty with an nth generation copy of His Book is even noticeable.