In message .com,
writes
Hi. I'm in the United States and interested to know what some of you
British weather enthusuasts have to say about your own perception of
global climate change. Perhaps a non-American perspective might prove
enlightening to me. Here, in contrast to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient
Truth', there seems to be a strong anti-opinion held by a sizeaable
minority that global warming is either hype and/or a conspiracy put on
by the left, allegorized in Michael Crichton's novel 'State of Fear'.

My own opinion is that there is strong evidence, both direct and
inferred, that the Earth as a whole is warmiing, particularly in the
Northern Hemisphere. That there are climatic fluctuations should not be
surprising since it would be naive to think that the Earth is a static
organism. What I would like to know is exactly how much are humans
contributing to climate change and if so, how - even if I'm skeptical
that much would be done about it even if it was shown beyond a shadow
of a doubt that people's activities were the primary cause of global
warming . After all, we've been warned about and shown the dire
consequences of pollution and deforestation but for the sake of
supposed progress nothing really changes and in fact, environmental
degradation seems to be accelerating.

I read Chrichton's 'State of Fear'. His philosophy could be applied to
many other aspects in the developed (?) countries; the current obsession
with health and beauty for example. I am not a climatologist merely a
meteorologist. However, it is good to see an American taking a serious
interest!
As has been pointed out you are not going to stop the main polluters
India and China who are in stage 3 of the demographic process. Here I
do not mean per capita. Obviously USA are the greatest offenders .p.c.
Unfortunately I think whatever group you approach in Europe, you are
going to find that America is getting pretty isolated both on this and,
at the moment, on other issues.
Cheers
Paul
--
'Wisest are they that know they do not know.' Socrates.
Paul Bartlett FRMetS
www.rutnet.co.uk Go to local weather.
400FT AMSL 25Miles southwest of the Wash

"Rob Overfield" wrote in message
...
Lawrence Jenkins wrote:
"Les Crossan" wrote
in message news
wrote:
Hi. I'm in the United States and interested to know what some of you
British weather enthusuasts have to say about your own perception of
global climate change. Perhaps a non-American perspective might
prove enlightening to me.

I'm in the minority in this NG as I'm a manmade GW sceptic. However a
country that starts a war to satisfy its own greed for oil, gives
aid to Lebanon and weapons to Israel, sends prisoners abroad to have
confessions tortured out of them, has oil companies naming
supertankers after Condoleeza Rice, has a president who listens to a
lunatic Christian extreme right lobby group to the detriment of
everybody else and produces all these dreadful cop chase TV
programmes must have something seriously wrong with its national
psyche.

The USA - a country that doesn't believe in the United Nations and
didn't ratify Kyoto. Hail Bush, hail Exxon.

--
Les Crossan,
Wallsend, Tyne & Wear
54.95N 1.5W
Home of the Wallsend StormCam and the Backup USW FAQ -
www.uksevereweather.org.uk


Les isn't this "greed for oil" a tad over cooked?'

You know recently the were some articles doing the rounds saying the
deforestation and burning wood as fuel of the last two thousands
years was the start of AGW!! Well please excuse our ancestors for
trying to survive and put the world in the fantastic position it is
today. There has always been war, famine, plague and pestilence.
More people now live longer and better than at any other time in
history. What we all seemingly take for granted today could not have
happened any other way.

By the way alternative renewable sources of energy have been used the
last thousands years; windmills and watermills and you know what?
they were crap. Without the industrial age we wouldn't all be sitting
on computers hating ourselves.

Ok Lawrence, but at the start of the industrial age, they were still in
use.

300 or so years on, surely we have the technology to make these tools for
collecting the renewable energy sources more efficient?
--
Rob Overfield
Hull
http://talkingtoomuchagain.blogspot.com


Well Rob I think the issue that's never mentioned but is core to the
problem of energy usage is capitalism. That's the way it works it relies on
constant growth and greater output -whether we need it or not.

Now take Hi-Fi I've been an avid participent in this hobby? for nearly
thirty years. In all that time basic speaker and amp design has hardly
changed. It's only the digital revolution that's been a qualitive leap
foward -and some would argue that!
Still though, amps are the same variation on a theme class A (very
inneficient Class B , classA/B and blimey class D (which I'm listening too
as I type. Why I even have a lovely (again very inefficient) valve amp still
sitting on the floor awaiting storage.
I even listen to Lowther speakers in a horn design that's been around since
Paul Voight designed the basics back in the 20's and 30's

http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/hfw/olde...hornspkrs.html

Anyhow the point I'm making is that although not much has changed it hasn't
stopped almost billions of hi-Fi products emerging over the decades all with
very slight improvements sometimes none at all. Yet the very process of
manafacturing enabled employment, earnings , a mmarket for other products.

With hi-fi and now increasingly home cinema if we all stayed with what we
have now in terms of equipment then the industry would collapse.

Tp take it to it's extreme if we had free clean energy tomorrow it would
initiate a world financial melt-down with consequences far worse than GW.

In my view capitalism is the best humanity has had so far, it provided a
need to inovate and try and develope better products even though my hi-fi
example shows that the fundamental are still the same there has been
incremental improvements over the years. Yet many products have to keep
being reinvented improved or other wise only economic collapse can prevail.

Look I'm losing it now the point is that altough without growth and
continuous renewal of markets the whole thing would topple over taking many
of us with it yet how many amplifiers does one need?

This is one tough nut to crack.

Felly sgrifennodd Alan Murphy :
"Big AL" wrote in message
...
It was meant tongue in cheek, I don't hold him personally responsible.
Please use the tongue-in-cheek emoticon (: ~()~
in future and spare us having to divine your meaning
in plain text.

Now there's a new one for me! Is there an emoticon for "only half
tongue-in-cheek"? I think I know how Big Al feels.

Adrian
--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais/weather/ uk

Big AL wrote:

I find it hard to discuss climate change with a country who will not conform
to the Kyoto treaty.
Nor apparently anything else with anyone else:
http://groups.google.com/groups/sear...ptaQ&scoring=d

Felly sgrifennodd Lawrence Jenkins :
Oh and you think India , China, Pakistan, the Middle east and so on are
going to be fantastic green stewards of mother earth? Grow up.

I haven't yet heard anyone from the government of any of those countries
denying GW. And it's very difficult to persuade them to do anything about
it whilst the biggest culprit pretends nothing is wrong.

Adrian
--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais/weather/ uk

"Adrian D. Shaw" wrote in message
...
Felly sgrifennodd Alan Murphy :
"Big AL" wrote in message
...
It was meant tongue in cheek, I don't hold him personally responsible.
Please use the tongue-in-cheek emoticon (: ~()~
in future and spare us having to divine your meaning
in plain text.

Now there's a new one for me! Is there an emoticon for "only half
tongue-in-cheek"? I think I know how Big Al feels.


Yes. 0.5(:-'

Will.
--

Felly sgrifennodd MichaelJP :
it doesn't really matter how much people are told they are
ruining the planet and must live greener lifestyles, in practice they simply
won't.

You mean I'm the only one who puts fuel efficiency at the top of my
priorities when buying a car, refuses to fly unless absolutely necessary,
has the central heating on no more than 16C, grows as much of my own
food as conditions here and my time will allow, and such?

I thought everyone was doing that. Maybe I'm just wasing my time.

Adrian
--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais/weather/ uk

Ian wrote:

I find it hard to discuss climate change with a country who will not conform
to the Kyoto treaty.

Well that's all right then, because you were being invited to discuss the
question by a single individual, you see, not a country.

A bollock brain wouldn't understand the concept of a discussion group
anyway.

The problem with glowball warming is that the participants in any
arguments on the subject soon get overheated. It's best left alone.
There are virulent specimen kicking **** out of each other on all the
boards remotely touching "on topic" with it.

Raise a serious question such as: "Where did all the carbon dioxide
that some 40 or 50 years ago was said to inhabit the sky, disappear
to?" and you get called a lying troll.

It's the stuff of monkeys.

Don't think that I am self satisfied with the status quo. I am not. I
just think that the story is not something to do with the make up of
the atmosphere so much as something that would have affected our
ancestors in a similar manner.

We know that these things have occurred before and they have occurred
before industrialisation.

Felly sgrifennodd Ian :
One aspect I don't often hear mentioned is the enormous increase in the
world's human population: in the early 1950s it was around two and a quarter
billion; a few years ago it was said to be almost 7 billion.

You're absolutely right, and this is in my opinion the biggest threat to
the world, in terms of both our environment and world peace.

Unfortunately politicians seem unwilling to try to tackle this problem,
maybe because on an individual country basis it is generally in their
interest to increase their population.

I heard someone on the radio fairly recently from some political party
advocating a reduction in the world's population to 10% of its present
level. He was treated as an extremist. Unfortunately, for the sake of
the world, he's probably on the right lines. Getting there would be
difficult and painful (think pensions for example, not to mention political
and religious problems), but unless we're prepared to live with the
consequences of our present affluence, necessary.

If we don't try to do this now by reducing births, environmental change
might reduce the population to such levels through more unpleasant means.

Adrian
--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais/weather/ uk

"Will Hand" wrote in message
...

"Adrian D. Shaw" wrote in message
...
Felly sgrifennodd MichaelJP :
it doesn't really matter how much people are told they are
ruining the planet and must live greener lifestyles, in practice they
simply
won't.

You mean I'm the only one who puts fuel efficiency at the top of my
priorities when buying a car, refuses to fly unless absolutely necessary,
has the central heating on no more than 16C, grows as much of my own
food as conditions here and my time will allow, and such?

I thought everyone was doing that. Maybe I'm just wasting my time.


Well I grow my own veg., rarely fly, drive smallish cars (1300 and
1600cc), and
our house is below 18C in winter.

Will.
--


TWO CARS! Tut tut...tut.