Jerry is now on my banned senders list

True. The Muller Thurgau is a German hybrid.

I know the older generation can be stubborn, and I realise the state pension isn't great, but given that they're all automatically paid up to =A3400 winter fuel allowance (no need to put in a claim), I would say it's down to choice if they decide not to spend it on staying warm. Further cold weather payments kick in if the weather stays cold for a week.

MBQ

"We" have only been around for a few hundred thousand. Unless, of course, you're an alien from outer space :-).

And since no one else had the courtesy to change the subject line, I did.

That'll only work on this branch of the thread.

I assume you consider evolution to only apply to physical changes, but dont see why that is so. The discovery of fire was a species adaptation that didnt require such a change but is still part of the evolution of humans.

Cheers, Simon

Maggie didnt want to increase taxation, quite the opposite in fact. Believe current tory party dont want to either - they will be forced to do so initially thanks to current wasteful lot. But too many activities under the climate change banner are not reducing energy consumption or emmisions. As have said already, distributing how ever many low energy bulbs that the power company have admitted are most unlikely to be used may have resulted in a net increase in energy consumption as well as costing energy users significant money.

Cheers, Simon

A quick count of the World's current population and it's continuing increase suggests that any negative change in weather patterns means we die. Perhaps not 6.5 billion, but a lot. Even now, the Earth is pushed to support us all.

Greg.P.

You're still proportionally as rich as ever - therefore you can still afford ... Pissing money against the wall is still just as wasteful as it ever was and poor economic strategy for nations.

Greg.P.

Serves you (and the USa) right for constantly and consistantly backing corrupt dictatorships/feudal monarchies! Unfortunately the rest of us will suffer along with you lot.

Greg.P.

In my lifetime I've seen coal for cooking and heating delivered to tenements in horse drawn wagons, men landing on the moon, mag lev trains, the LHC, etc. Our adaptation does not depend on physical change and has not since we started making tools and controlling fire. As to other species and evolutionary theory, we have the classic example of the peppered moth in England adapting over a period of 50 years or less - and the use of coal had a lot to do with the forcing of its adaptation. Some species will inevitably die, but some will die regardless of what we do.

Then there are the issues of monetary cost to a battered global economy and the delusion that we know what to do and the possible unintended consequences of our actions. In the 1950s the UN decided to help out some of the tribes living in the Sahel region of Africa by drilling deep wells for them. Very simple. Not even close to the complexity of global climate. Wealth among the Sahel dwellers was counted in cattle. More water meant more cattle could be raised. More cattle meant more pressure on the grazing land. Eventually the over grazing was one cause of the Sahara boundary moving a couple hundred clicks south. The cattle died, the people had to move and everybody was worse off than before the UN started helping. Personally I'd rather the UN stayed out of the Climate business.

"We" are hominids. The earliest date for hominids has recently been pushed back to 8,000,000 years BP. IIRC, the h*mo sapiens sapiens boundary is around 150k ybp.

There have been days when I wonder ... ;-p

Thank you.

Good. That will solve a lot of the climate issues right there and is a nice way of dealing with change - Natural Selection.

and Swiss banks ...

We didn't 'export' a problem to Bhopal. The Indian government allowed the building and operation of a sub-standard factory because they wanted to industrialize at any cost.

Well, they gave it a try, but weren't too successful.

Don't you think it's time we stopped backing them?

It has been a religious argument since Al Gore got involved.

And of course Union Carbide insisted on US levels of health and safety and inspection regimes, because to do anything else would be exploiting lax local regulations and completely unethical. Oh, wait... Guy

Long before then, really. Guy