----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Napier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 8:01 PM
Subject: Re: [canals-list] Fwd: Transport in the Green Manifesto
>It's hard to know where to start with this - like Steve, I didn't
>realise there were any of you guys left outside the Bible Belt.
Oh there are plenty. But it's interesting you should reference religion, as
the comparisom between religious belief and environmentalist fervour is
fascinating...
Neither group likes dissenters from the True Faith, and both are rather good
at bending the underlying basis to suit their own ends.
>Yes - 8 of the hottest 10 years on record have occurred in the last
>decade,
By a marginal amount, if you take "on record" as referring to a few hundred
years. Which you have to, because much further back and the data is by
inference from secondary sources, like that infamous temp. rise graph which
takes a sharp upward kink right where the data stops being inferred from
(one set of) tree ring data and starts using *actual recorded measurements*.
If I had a set of experimental results which did that I would realise that
my data sources were not equivalent.
If you pick and choose which bits of the history you look at you can prove
anything. By the same sort of extrapolation you can prove that by 2019 one
third of the worlds population will be Elvis impersonators.
Then, we are talking about *anthropogenic* GW here, so some proof is
required that emissions are to blame - if you wish to introduce the
atmospheric carbon vs. global temperature graph here, *look very carefully
at it first*.
> and people living on low lying Pacific islands are now having
>to move their villages back as the sea levels rise towards them.
Been happening for centuries. There are plenty of drowned ancient coastal
cities around.
In the UK, however, the Tide Tables don't show it. (The south of England
*is* slowly sinking at the moment, however the archaeological record shows
that many Roman ports are currently rather a long way from the sea.)
>> Or are you under the impression (which the enviro loonies certainly
>> tried to
>> give at the time) that the asian tsunami or hurricane Katrina, for
>> example,
>> were consequences of GW?
>No, and this isn't true - responsible reporting made it clear that
>although these events might be linked to GW, it was by no means certain
Not "by no means certain", Tsunamis have *nothing whatsoever* to do with GW.
>Again just not true - it's not about stats, it's about events like
>chunks of ice sheet the size of Belgium falling off Antarctica, and the
>northern ice cap shrinking to its smallest size since records began
Again the timescale is insignificant in earth terms, and does it have
anything to do with anthropogenic GW? As ice is less dense than water this
will not cause a rise in sea level.
>
>Rather the reverse - to his shame, Brown backed down in front of the
>fuel protesters and abandoned the fuel tax escalator. This government
>has done almost nothing to reduce UK emissions, only taken advantage of
>the reductions which were inevitable from the switch from coal to gas
>for power generation, and of the continuing decline in heavy industry
>to claim that they had achieved something.
Yeah, hammer road transport.
Funny how it's not the g8 loonies, but everything proposed is aimed squarely
at the targets *they* love to hate.
I recently saw a press release from one of the proliferation of green groups
saying that people who live alone use a disproportionate amount of resouces
and that the answer is *collective housing*. Sure thing, comrade.
On the subject of power generation; there is a fleet of diesel hauled coal
trains which do nothing but shuttle between Hunterston coal terminal on the
Clyde and the power stations on the Forth 24/7. This accounts for a
substancial percentage of the claimed railfreight tonnage, and has no other
purpose. It is *not* about emissions, it is about political ideology.
A point to ponder. As any research which does not fit the doomsday scenario
is ridiculed because it was supposedly produced by scientists in the pay of
"big oil", the next time an academic appears on the TV or in the press
espousing GW, ask yourself "If this is bollocks, would this person have a
job, would the organisation he works for even exist?"
>
>Since moving on board Sanity, my total fuel consumption is now a
>fraction of what it was previously. I now use less diesel for virtually
>all my energy requirements than I used to use just for personal
>transport.
It doesn't matter what happened in the past, you are currently producing
your energy by burning diesel at small scale. Zero renewable points for a
start.
Very poor conversion efficiency, too. And the leisure travel part is
completely unjustifyable. *If you believe that anthropogenic GW is a major
problem*.
>I guess it's not a case of agreeing to disagree, but of agreeing to
>consider each other totally deranged, so not much point continuing this
>thread.
Oh well, I replied anyway. Don't read it if you don't like it.
--
Niall
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