There's this big wind

Just thought you would like to know it's blowing a hoolie up here and the house is shaking.

 

Didn't look too clever on the news this evening. Hope nothing gets damaged.

Michael.

 

Strange. My ducks seemed to start acting weird, well, weird for ducks at least earlier. Then a short while later a mini storm seemed to kick off. Was as if they knew it was coming. I'll see if I can get the lottery numbers out of them in future.

Hope it's not too bad Tom and that nothing gets damaged.

 

Yeah, it's a real shame whats happened - but gobal warming is a real danger for all of us, there is simply too much carbon emissions being let into the atmosphere... its also happened with los angeles they've had 18 months of rain in the last few weeks, lots of people hace died there...

The earth is getting warmer (because of the emissions) and this is causing warmer weather, storms - which can cause fires, which make the earth warmer....we'll also be experiencing more freak kind of weather, then to top it all off, countries like india (which have been poor for a long time) are now getting lots of jobs with call centres etc, so, there is the potential for another 50 million people buying tvs, cars, washing machines etc - this won't help...up until the industrial age the carbon levels (on earth) were very stable, but since then the levels have raised at an almost vertical rate... It has been reported that the oil reserves are running out and the oil companies have to look for it at new locations...check out - http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10211&fcategory_desc=Under Reported , tho I'm not sure how true this is... I've been watching a lot of tv about this recently, and in the past it all seemed to be a distant event, it all seems to be happening now!! Some say we have about 30 years left...

Sorry for being all gloomy, but it is praying on my mind a lot...but there endeth my rant for today....

 

Well, I'm still here and it appears all is in tact but it was quite noisy during the night. Got to go into Perth. The Aldi/Lidl run; it'll be interesting to see if we get that far.

 

What have you been eating?

 

curried baked beans..?? blimey, now theres a thought...

 

When I was walking down this path to my university building yesterday there a couple of very large trees which fell over, if this had happened during the day in term time it may have killed people.

 

Its been windy as hell here in Aber the past few days, last night didn't seem so bad, but in previous days we've had a few trees come down all over the uni campus, and the seafront road has been covered in debris from the sea....some of these cars were damaged by bits of wood and stones.





Also whilst everybody else in Wales seemed to be having floods and torrential rain on Saturday, we got weather like this....



It was cold and windy as anything but it was so clear, we could (apparently) see over 50 miles of coastline from the hilll which sadly my camera phone fails to capture

 

There is more energy in the Earth's system at this time and more water too (as the ice caps melt).

Some researchers say that the increase in greenhouse gases has followed global warming while others say that the increase is the cause of the warming. I don't know enough to be sure but tend to believe the latter - that it's our fault.

50 million more tvs, cars, etc. in India wouldn't be too bad if there were increases in efficiency in the cars and machines that the rest of us use but, assuming this crisis is man-made, I suspect that it will take the situation to become desparate before we really start to take action to fix it. I guess that this will be when share prices start to fall.

I hope that we won't be past help by then. I'd hate to leave the planet to the cockroaches. They have no appreciation of hi-fi or music.

I'm glad you and yours (wife, hi-fi) have got through the night intact, Tom.

 

aparently a whale foetus develops seperate fingers and toes which fuse together to become flukes and flippers. perhaps all this has happened before and when the previous custodians of the land butt raped the earth and she fought back with floods and the like they all jumped in the sea and evolved as douglas adams would have us believe.
ah well, i'll do my bit as best i can but as steve says the status quo will be protected to the best of the worlds corporations abilities. enhancing shareholder value and due dilligence have a lot to answer for.
cheers


julian

 

If global warming is due to emissions then there's nothing we can do about it other than deal with the consequences (other than depopulation and regression to a simple peasant based society, which is the environmentalist policy).

If the Kyoto agreement was fully implemented and all targets met then the best estimate is that the consequences of climate change would be delayed 6 years. Personally I think the money should be spent on other humanitarian uses.

Paul

 

If warming is caused by emissions then the effect is cumulative and will most likely get worse exponentially.

In that case we must do something, otherwise the money spent on humanitarian uses will be like applying elastoplast to wounds that gape ever larger.

 

There is no evidence at all that the effect is 'cumulative' and will worsen exponentially.

The fact remains that there is nothing we can realistically do about emissions other than tinker with them. So we will have to live (or not) with the consequences.

It's obviously a good idea to reduce emissions, but since government policy is to increase them it's hard for individuals to make a difference.

Paul

 

to quote the BBC web site
Mr Morley told MPs unpredictable weather was something the country now had to prepare for. "Climate change is a reality," he said. "We have had the warmest 10 years on record, since the 1990s."

something not right about that stat or am I missing something?

 

Sorry, what I meant to say was that the levels of emissions have been increasing year on year and that the climate change, assuming it's affected by the emissions, is reckoned to be working some years 'in arrears'. Therefore, even if the emissions were to stop now, there would be a worsening of the climate for some years to come.

Paul, although I agree that it's hard for us to make a difference as individuals, I feel that it mustn't stop us trying.

I'm reminded of Abraham Maslow giving a lecture to his psychology students. He asked them: "Which of you are destined for greatness?". When no one put up their hand he just said: "If not you, then who?"

 

Bollocks!

This isn't aimed at you, Paul, btw - just some general obs of people I see around me

Get on yer bike or feet and leave the car at home when you need to go shopping or go to work; if you live too far, move closer. Moaning about fuel costs and then living in the sticks seems silly. If you live (and work) in a city, you can ditch the car completely - I bet MOST journeys done by car are less than a mile - I can walk that in around 12 minutes. And FFS *walk* your kids to school!!!

If every household in the world turned off one un-needed lightbulb at night....

Don't go on foreign holidays - planes wreck the ozone layer. The Internet's there for a reason - look at places online and save your cash.

That's just three things I can think of right now that'd help.

Of course, in my fantasy world, banning cars would be the best thing right now. That way, I'd then be able to walk to work without being held up for 2 minutes at a pelican crossing, or discovering that every time I want to cross the road, half of Devon decides to drive down the bit of road I want to cross. And then there's the impossibility of being able to see where you're walking in winter, when cars are driving towards you after dark... Grrr!

Roll on March, so it's light and warm enough to cycle in - yippee!

 

Government policy encourages car usage and then encourages traffic jams.
Government policy encourages immigration which encourages consumption.
Government policy encourages air travel by relatively subsidising it.
Government policy encourages central heating by relatively subsidising the fuel.
etc etc.

If everybody turned off a light it wouldn't make any difference. We need to reduce emissions by at least 50%, not limit the increase to 10% (plucking numbers out of the air, but they're in the ballpark)

I haven't driven my car since mid-December. FWIW.

Paul

 

I think with car use people just need to be more careful how they use them, i.e don't just get in the car everytime you need to get there, think of the alternatives, buses, trains, walking, cycleling or what ever. Use cars when you really have to.

It depresses me how many people use their cars to drive to the local shops which are about 500 yards away.

The problem is our western life style comes at a price, and now we are starting to pay for it.

 

Was watching (the latter half of) a program about this on C4 earlier; looked like the old-style Farrady lectures, but not sure as I missed the start.

The suggestion was that the Carbon Mon/Di oxide (again, unsure which)content in the atmosphere is currently 370 ppm and is increasing by 3ppm per year.

The belief was that once we hit 500ppm we're into unstoppable drastic climate change. Up until that point, there's a chance to do something about it.

Haven't had a chance to follow this up due to coming into work, but it might be worth looking into it a bit more.