Jerry is now on my banned senders list

I'm still puzzling over why the UK worships the US.

Or Gaia? :-)

Jim.

Same-Same. :)

Would India have had the appropriate inspectors available? Has India improved their regulations since? It's all vey well to put it down to somebody else, but in the end it comes down to personal and local responsibility.

Don't know, I'm in the US.

BBC had a shocking satellite image of the UK a few days ago. Looked like you were already there!

HL Mencken "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

MBQ

I think our press are doing our politicians out of that job at the moment. :-)

Jim.

HL Mencken "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

MBQ

Think somebody got it wrong then unless current prime minister doesnt really exist !

Cheers, Simon

The people don't! Most Americans are quite shocked to discover how deeply unpopular the US (goverenment, not people!) is in Europe. The government do have a fixation with the US, I can only suggest that the reason is so they can, as they see it anyway, catch some of the "glory". As Tony Blair has found to his cost, you have to be careful what you wish for though.

Popular though the sport is (see BBC "Have Your Say"), I would like to make it clear I'm NOT Yank bashing, just observing.

Cheers Richard

Because they make us look good by comparison? Guy

You've got the French just across La Manche for that!

The current rate of change doesn't need tens of thousands of years - it's observable over the last 50 years.

George Orwell wrote something similar in "1984", in 1949.

1948 - he reversed the last two numbers for his title. (well, perhaps he started writing in 1948 and published in 1949?)

I believe it was published in 1949.

The definitive movie version with Richard Burton and John Hurt was made in the same months of 1984 in which the novel was set. I remember seeing one print of that film in which there was a musical prelude and postlude over a blank screen, but all other versions I have seen don't have those.

But that is the issue - is the change in the last n years abnormal, and if so, what contribution is/has man made to that change?

(which I picked purely at random from a google search, so no comment as to it's accuracy, but it does look similar to other results).

Certainly 50 years is far too short a time span to look at - the Romans grew grapes in southern Scotland, and the Thames froze over a number of times in Dickens'day, so what we would consider wild fluctuations in weather are 'normal' it would appear.

Cheers Richard

Hang on, the question that need to answer is something like "what is the effect of man on the global temperature currently" and "if we have caused a rise in global temperature then will it result in catastrophic event(s) in the future if we continue to live as we do".

So we need to establish a base temperature curve between the ice ages by measuring back far enough to predict what the global temperature would have been without our presence. Then predict what the temperature is likely to be if we continue as we are and what it would have been if we werent here and hadnt done what we did.

Only then can we see what we can or must do - if we need to do anything - to avoid any possible catastrophy.

So how we doing so far ?

Cheers, Simon

That's the $60,000 question - and no one seems to have a definitive answer, just educated guesses (which fairly well describes science, I suppose, there being no such thing as a 'fact' in science - 2 + 2 = 4 is only an example of a lemma that two integers added always add up to an integer. If someone does stumble across a case where two integers added do not add up to an integer, then there is proof - proof by contradiction

- that the lemma is incorrect. In the mean time 2 + 2 = 4 works ok).

The bit that concerns me is the politicising of the issue. By that I mean such and such a report will say we have to reduce CO2 emissions but omit to mention that methane is a far more dangerous greenhouse gas (amongst others), and it is acceptable to slag off 4x4 owners yet ignore 2+2 sports cars that do less to the gallon and have no practical justification, yet 18 to 20% (according to the BBC News site a couple of weeks back) of CO2 emissions come from burning of the Amazon rain forests and could be stopped almost instantly, thus meeting CO2 targets, if those doing the burning were compensated to the tune something like a billion pounds (i.e. rather less than bailing out a bank).

I'm still not saying what I think on the issue, just highlighting how I believe the issue has been hijacked, and therefore confused, by single- issue groups who have their own agendas, and by governments looking to raise revenue.

Cheers Richard