Protesters blockade at Stansted airport

mrposhman

Voyager2002 wrote: »

As for the point that "we only have a few years left", see the reports in the Guardian yesterday, discussing the results presented at the conference organised by the Met. Office over the summer. Sadly, rather than having "a few years left" it seems that we have already past the point of no return. Our choice now will determine whether we face very serious problems, or absolute catastrophe.

The problem with this is that EVERY report on climate change comes back with different scenarios. The reason being is that no-one really knows so coming on here spouting that "we only have a few years left" or "we are passed the point of no return" is based on assumptions made as apparantly this has never happened before.

I'm not denying that we may have an affect but putting time limits on something is purely assumptions that are based onto models. No-one really knows how long it will take the ice shelfs to melt and then affect the global temperature.

wdyw

Voyager2002 wrote: »

As for the point that "we only have a few years left", see the reports in the Guardian yesterday, discussing the results presented at the conference organised by the Met. Office over the summer. Sadly, rather than having "a few years left" it seems that we have already past the point of no return. Our choice now will determine whether we face very serious problems, or absolute catastrophe.

Gosh that story is right next to the one that tells us that students are getting better at Science and Maths so it must be true!

wdyw

mrposhman wrote: »

The problem with this is that EVERY report on climate change comes back with different scenarios. The reason being is that no-one really knows so coming on here spouting that "we only have a few years left" or "we are passed the point of no return" is based on assumptions made as apparantly this has never happened before.

Exactly, 10 years ago or so the IPCC were saying that it was "likely" man made activities were causing most of the global climate changes, a few years ago it was stated as being "very likely". 90% probablilty or therabouts, but they just don't know for sure ....but obviously they are urging action now in case it turns out that we need to change what we are doing.

Anyway, back to the tree huggers and wanting to ban short haul flights. I don't suppose they are aware that its not just how many tonnes of exhaust gases that is being released into the atmosphere that matters, but also at what altitude this is occurring....

Voyager2002

withabix wrote: »

If you care to check, you will find that most of the population and businesses in Britain are NOT IN LONDON.

Therefore, Eurostar is NOT quicker at all.

From my city, via English West Coast Mainline (Pendolino) and Euorstar to Paris, for example, is 8h45 minutes each way and costs £400 return. Standard Class. Add 30 minutes travel at each end, plus 'check-in' time and your up at over 10 hours door-to-door.

From my nearest airport to Paris costs approx £200 return with Air France and takes around 1h45 each way. Add 1 hour travel at each end plus 1 hour check-in and you're looking at under 5 hours door-to-door.

Hmmmm....difficult choice:rolleyes:

I can fly to Bristol in less than 1 hour each way from my local airport for £99 return. By train that takes 5 hours each way and costs £140-£170 return.

I agree with your point about fares: there is a clear need to bring rail fares into line with air fares for this kind of journey. For some reason the industry seems to believe that British customers don't care about price, and so use us as a cash cow to subsidise all other European passengers. So it is not surprising that many of us are taking to the air.

On time: if you factor in the 'dead' time that flying involves, while trains (particularly in first class) provide an excellent working environment, I think you will find that the comparison not quite as one-sided as you make it out to be.

Voyager2002

mrposhman wrote: »

The problem with this is that EVERY report on climate change comes back with different scenarios. The reason being is that no-one really knows so coming on here spouting that "we only have a few years left" or "we are passed the point of no return" is based on assumptions made as apparantly this has never happened before.

I'm not denying that we may have an affect but putting time limits on something is purely assumptions that are based onto models. No-one really knows how long it will take the ice shelfs to melt and then affect the global temperature.

Yes, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the precise details. However, the consensus in the scientific community is remarkable, and I think we would be foolish to ignore it.

I am not a climate scientist, but I know how to analyse critically the pronouncements made by scientists (that was the subject of my PhD). I was certainly impressed by Sir David King, just at the end of his period as chief scientist to the UK government, when I heard him speaking about climate change. He was really scared by the prospect, and was in a situation where he had nothing to gain by mis-representing the facts.

wdyw

Voyager2002 wrote: »

I am not a climate scientist, but I know how to analyse critically the pronouncements made by scientists (that was the subject of my PhD). I was certainly impressed by Sir David King, just at the end of his period as chief scientist to the UK government, when I heard him speaking about climate change. He was really scared by the prospect, and was in a situation where he had nothing to gain by mis-representing the facts.

Quite apt to bring up David King ....his views on flying and how it is being used as a scapegoat should be passed on to the tree huggers.

Nothing to gain by mis-representing the facts ..but he had a new book to sell!

mrposhman

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Yes, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the precise details. However, the consensus in the scientific community is remarkable, and I think we would be foolish to ignore it.

I am not a climate scientist, but I know how to analyse critically the pronouncements made by scientists (that was the subject of my PhD). I was certainly impressed by Sir David King, just at the end of his period as chief scientist to the UK government, when I heard him speaking about climate change. He was really scared by the prospect, and was in a situation where he had nothing to gain by mis-representing the facts.

I'm not saying people are misrepresenting the facts, nowhere i my posts have I stated that the climate is not changing, however I find making doomsday predictions does not engage with most people and in fact turns a lot off from the theory. There is no basis for continually changing the dates of when disaster may occur as this just ends up creating further uncertainty and raises concerns that the data is being manipulated to provide earlier forecasts for change.

There are also much easier tasks to change at a muich quicker pace that would have a big impact on our emissions. For example, the LDA have recently approved London to open 6 new incineration plants for waste. Not only is this a waste of money but it does little to help emission reduction. If "protesters" actually cared more about issues like this, these would be 6 new anaerobic digesters that could create Energy from Waste (EFW) and also provode fertiliser from the remains. All methane emissions would be removed though replaced with a much lower output of co2. This policy is fully supported by Friends of the Earth but is not taken up by egotistical protestors who only want to make their name with the big issues that are generally in the "not going to happen" column.

I worked out (based on crude calculations and based on a business case from Derbyshire) that the UK could probably achieve between 4-5% of its energy consumption through EfW effectively reducing emissions massively as this would also reduce some of the need for importing of energy.

There are other issues that should be targetted but are given pretty much no attention by these sorts of people like the supporters of Plane Stupid. I would have a bet that most of the "greens" involved with Plane Stupid have probably never even heard of EfW and thats why I have aboslutely no time for them.

EfW would help us towards a self-sustainable society, breaking into an airport - not so much.

mrposhman

wdyw wrote: »

Quite apt to bring up David King ....his views on flying and how it is being used as a scapegoat should be passed on to the tree huggers.

Nothing to gain by mis-representing the facts ..but he had a new book to sell!

this is a link to an article on him in the guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/12/climatechange.carbonemissions

quite appropriate at what he targets.

The Plane Stupid mob are one which I would link "taking us back to the 1700's". Check out EfW for technlogical solutions that will take us forward whilst continuing to be greener, much like nucleur power. A mix of nucleur / tidal / efw / hydro and some wind should power a significant proportion of the country but needs significant investment.

ynot2005

mrposhman wrote: »

this is a link to an article on him in the guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/12/climatechange.carbonemissions

quite appropriate at what he targets.

The Plane Stupid mob are one which I would link "taking us back to the 1700's". Check out EfW for technlogical solutions that will take us forward whilst continuing to be greener, much like nucleur power. A mix of nucleur / tidal / efw / hydro and some wind should power a significant proportion of the country but needs significant investment.

spot on mr poshman, the plane stupid mob dont want to bother with recycle issues because its not sexy, there is no excitement, bringing stansted to a halt gets backsides on coaches for a fun day out.

i bet there was some briefing from the team leaders to the protestors just so they all knew why they were doing it.

its a shame BAA took 5 hours to re-open stansted, thats bang out of order, they should have dealt with it long before flights got cancelled. the message to plane stupid should be , you will be moved at once and the protest will fail.

the protest unfortunately was a success and is a green light for more

Hintza

Here are a couple of article that make interesting reading:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3563532/The-world-has-never-seen-such-freezing-heat.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3563714/Stubborn-glaciers-fail-to-retreat-awkward-polar-bears-continue-to-multiply.html

You can go on and do a bit more research but the data used is not as cut and dried as some would like us to think.

Remember in the 70's we were going to be hit by a New Ice Age.