In message et, Dave
Liquorice writes
And put the world ten plus years behind into R&D into alternative
energy sources because Bush was in the pocket of Big Oil.

One hopes and expects that the 8 years of the Bush administration put
R&D back by less than, rather than more than 8 years.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In message
Rodney Blackall wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

Climate change is not new. It has always happened, with or without
power stations and motor cars. And mankind has always survived it. A
bit of extra warmth might even be a good thing, when you think of all
that tundra that might become fertile.

Thawing the tundra would very probably release a huge amount of methane and
accelerate warming so much that even deniers would notice.

Trying to stop climate change (even if that is desirable which is
questionable) is like King Canute trying to stop the tide coming in.
Except that he didn't make the mistake of commiting the entire
contents of his treasury to doing so. Perhaps if he was worried that
the tide would keep coming in forever and swamp his kingdom, he should
have built flood defences rather than telling it to go back!

Remember that Canute KNEW he could not stop the tide but had to prove it to
courtiers who thought he could.

But I'm sure that the tide eventually receded. That is what I'm sure
will happen, as it may be doing already, to the warming trend of the
1990s.

--
Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.dixon4/
Believing is the start of everything to come. - Hayley Westenra

In message , James Brown
writes
I

Jeepers the God botherers don't half pop up all over the place these
days. Why not stick with your fairy stories folks and leave the rest
of us in peace?


Out of interest Jim, I'm a bit perplexed to know how a bag of chemicals
has an opinion....

Cheers



Fair comment but at least this bag of chemicals has sufficient strength
of mind not accept myth as fact.

--


Jim

In message ,
writes

Sorry to diappoint you, but I am not a creationist. But I do like
Australia, I was over there last year.
Actually, I am a traditional Christian. The kind that believes that
God was serious when after Noah's flood, that he would never destroy
the world by flooding again.

Dear me Noah's flood?

The worrying thing to me is that you people are given a vote.
--


Jim

On Apr 10, 10:40*pm, wrote:
In message
* * * * * Rodney Blackall wrote:



In article ,
* wrote:

Climate change is not new. *It has always happened, with or without
power stations and motor cars. *And mankind has always survived it. *A
bit of extra warmth might even be a good thing, when you think of all
that tundra that might become fertile.

Thawing the tundra would very probably release a huge amount of methane and
accelerate warming so much that even deniers would notice.

Trying to stop climate change (even if that is desirable which is
questionable) is like King Canute trying to stop the tide coming in.
Except that he didn't make the mistake of commiting the entire
contents of his treasury to doing so. *Perhaps if he was worried that
the tide would keep coming in forever and swamp his kingdom, he should
have built flood defences rather than telling it to go back!

Remember that Canute KNEW he could not stop the tide but had to prove it to
courtiers who thought he could.

But I'm sure that the tide eventually receded. *That is what I'm sure
will happen, as it may be doing already, to the warming trend of the
1990s.

Where is your scepticism? Carbon dioxide is still increasing. Why
should it suddenly get cooler? Do you think God will save us?

He didn't save us from the trenches of the first World War, or his
chosen people from the concentration camps or the Warsaw ghetto. Or
even from the Boxing Day tsunami or the latest Italian earthquake. If
God created this beautiful world then he won't stand by while we trash
it!

Cheers, Alastair.

In message , Jim Kewley
writes
In message , James Brown
writes
I

Jeepers the God botherers don't half pop up all over the place these
days. Why not stick with your fairy stories folks and leave the rest
of us in peace?


Out of interest Jim, I'm a bit perplexed to know how a bag of
chemicals has an opinion....

Cheers



Fair comment but at least this bag of chemicals has sufficient strength
of mind not accept myth as fact.


OK Jim, and I'm with you, but words like. mind, strength,... not quite
what I expect from just mixing water, iron, carbon, potassium etc
together ;-))

Cheers
--
James Brown

In message , James Brown
writes
In message , Jim Kewley
writes
In message , James Brown
writes
I

Jeepers the God botherers don't half pop up all over the place these
days. Why not stick with your fairy stories folks and leave the rest
us in peace?


Out of interest Jim, I'm a bit perplexed to know how a bag of
chemicals has an opinion....

Cheers



Fair comment but at least this bag of chemicals has sufficient
strength of mind not accept myth as fact.


OK Jim, and I'm with you, but words like. mind, strength,... not quite
what I expect from just mixing water, iron, carbon, potassium etc
together ;-))

Cheers


Must be a 'miracle' ;-))



--


Jim

In message
Jim Kewley wrote:

In message ,
writes

Sorry to diappoint you, but I am not a creationist. But I do like
Australia, I was over there last year.
Actually, I am a traditional Christian. The kind that believes that
God was serious when after Noah's flood, that he would never destroy
the world by flooding again.

Dear me Noah's flood?

The worrying thing to me is that you people are given a vote.

Were you there at the time? If not, you cannot know anything about
it. Any more than I can. But there is a folk memory, and that is all
we have. Since there was nobody there making climatic obsevations
with modern instruments at the time you know nothing! Any more than I
do.

You should not dismiss the folk memory just because you cannot accept
everything that is written in that book.

Martin
--
Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.dixon4/
Believing is the start of everything to come. - Hayley Westenra

In message
Jim Kewley wrote:

In message , James Brown
writes
I

Jeepers the God botherers don't half pop up all over the place these
days. Why not stick with your fairy stories folks and leave the rest
of us in peace?


Out of interest Jim, I'm a bit perplexed to know how a bag of chemicals
has an opinion....

Cheers



Fair comment but at least this bag of chemicals has sufficient strength
of mind not accept myth as fact.

But are you not just the teeniest bit intrigued as to where that myth,
or indeed that strength of mind came from?

--
Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.dixon4/
Believing is the start of everything to come. - Hayley Westenra

In message
Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:


Sorry to diappoint you, but I am not a creationist. But I do like
Australia, I was over there last year.
Actually, I am a traditional Christian. The kind that believes that
God was serious when after Noah's flood, that he would never destroy
the world by flooding again.

1) One wonders how you manage to reconcile not being a creationist with
a belief in the historicity of the Noachian Flood.

These are not related. There is some arceological evindence for noh's
flood, which may have been local or global, who knows.

But there is a folk memory of it, so we can't just dismiss it as
fiction.

2) That's a poor reason for denying the significance of anthropogenic
forcings.

It has nothing to do with anthropogereic forcings. We know that the
Clean Air Act in the UK has changed the climate for example. I
certainly can't deny that!


The type that beleives that there is a
purpose to our existence, and that life is more than just to die.
I have far more confidence in Him than in science, and much more in
science than politics, but since this is a scientific newsgroup, and
I am a scientist as well as a Christian, I prefer to limit myself to
scientific argument when posting here. And it is a scientific
approach that I am asking for here. Science is a very powerful tool
for finding out more about God's universe.
Scepticism is the highest calling of any true scientist. Any person
with a scientific education has been taught to question everything.
And as an engineer, working with safety critical systems, I expect to
see robust proofs that something is correct before I entrust my life
(and more importantly other people's lives) to it.

Very good. Now, why aren't you demanding robust proofs that CO2
emissions don't affect the climate? You're entrusting your
grandchildren's lives to it.

I can demand all I like, but in the current political climate, funding
will not be made available for that sort of research. It is not what
the establishment wish to hear, so they won't pay for anything that
risks thier "consesnus" being breached.



OK, in the case of AGW it is only money, but it is eye-watering
amounts of the stuff. I have yet to see a credible cost-benefit
analysis of the "fight against global warming" even if we assume that
the fight will be successful, which is far from certain. If we are
wrong, the prosperity of the world will be severely damaged for no
benefit. And if we are right, and our attempts to combat climate
change fail (which seems likely), we will be weakened and less able to
survive. So The pro-AGW people are asking us to take a huge gamble
with the future of the human race if the theory is right, and if wrong
then to beggar ourselves for no good reason. It is a lose-lose
approach if you ask me.

1) You're asking us to take a bigger gamble with the future of the human
race.

Actually, it may be a smaller gamble, but I will let that pass. Our
grandchildren may have technologies available that we can't even dream
of today, much as we have technologies beyond the dreams of out
grandparents. Those technologies could mean that they will be far
petter placed to fight whatever climate change occurs than we are now.
They are also much more likely to have a better underatanding of the
whole issue.

To quote my Hero ( Mark Ch 6)

"Do not worry about tomorrow, it will have enough worries of its own.
There is no need to add to the troubles that each day brings".




2) If in the end it becomes necessary to beggar ourselves to counter
global warming it will because people like you have increased the cost
by causing us to delay action.

But against that, as knowledge increases, our ability to counter it
can only get better. If we stifle the resaerch now that could lead to
that, we could make things a lot worse.



3) It does make a difference whether the eventual climate change is 2
degrees or 4 degrees of warming.

Indeed. Or 2 or 4 degrees cooler. And we really do not know which
way it will go, if any, and should not make the mistake of beleving
that we do. That is every bit as impervious to scientific reasoning
as Christan faith.


Martin

--
Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.dixon4/
Believing is the start of everything to come. - Hayley Westenra