The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

How about 'Pedal Prisons' where your inmates can make a bob or two on an exercise bike wired up to push juice into the National Grid?

[JamesC]

Bwah ha ha!

Just now on Newsnight!

Question: Michael, is cooking a life skill?

Michael Portillo: it's not a life skill in terms of something you need to survive. Instant meals are available or you can go out to restaurants.


Just to clarify - this wasn't a joke.


Fucking hell.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Michael Portillo: it's not a life skill in terms of something you need to survive. Instant meals are available or you can go out to restaurants.

*dismissive wanking gesture*

[TordelBack]

Michael Portillo: it's not a life skill in terms of something you need to survive. Instant meals are available or you can go out to restaurants.

*dismissive wanking gesture*

Madre de Grud.   If feeding yourself and your family doesn't count as a life skill, what does is anyone's guess. Not even his pretty train programmes can make that man seem human(e).

Sharky: here's a great free-to-read SF short story about a bicycle power economy: http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/stories/The_Bikes_of_New_York.html.  Predates Black Mirror, obviously.

Much of the rest of Chester Brown's stuff is worth a read too, especially his autobiographical tales.

[TordelBack]

To clarify: not that Chester Brown. This one.

[Hawkmumbler]

Bwah ha ha!

Just now on Newsnight!

Question: Michael, is cooking a life skill?

Michael Portillo: it's not a life skill in terms of something you need to survive. Instant meals are available or you can go out to restaurants.


Just to clarify - this wasn't a joke.


Fucking hell.

Well, as a student who is paying his own parents rent and buy his own food, I can clarify that any student who can afford to go to a restaurant with or without a certain other any more frequently than once a month is either fucking minted or fucking stupid. Or a Tory. Fucking idiot.

[Mikey]

Oh, so they do know...

the level of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Yes.

the amount of CO2 produced by humans?

Yes. Can certainly make a good estimate.

what happenned to the difference in the level of CO2 humans apparantly create versus what they find in the atmosphere?

Don't know what you mean here. Do you mean the concentration more than around 2 million years ago i.e. pre human? If so, then yes. There's a lot of proxy evidence which extends to back the conditions of the early Earth atmosphere.

what effects the increased CO2 has?

Yes.

what the 'breaking point is'?

Not yet, maybe not before it happens if it ever does. The 'tipping point', or the state change the atmosphere will go through before a new equilibrium is established, is a bit vague if you ask me, but would be the most mental bit. That's the badger that relies on the effects and feedbacks through the whole Earth system.

I'll challenge anyone who just believes the official line just because a bunch of paid scientists tell them to until the cows come home. There is not a scientific consensus on climate change and for the authorities to claim that there is is misinformed at best and mind-shreddingly stupid at worst.

Wish I got paid for this shit. Plus: ballix (you expected that though!)

M

[von Boom]

Bwah ha ha!

Just now on Newsnight!

Question: Michael, is cooking a life skill?

Michael Portillo: it's not a life skill in terms of something you need to survive. Instant meals are available or you can go out to restaurants.


Just to clarify - this wasn't a joke.


Fucking hell.

Just when you think people can't get any stupider...

[The Legendary Shark]

More carbon dioxide = more plants = bigger harvests = more food.

.

To attribute the major driver of climate change to human activity (and to publicly insinuate that it's All our fault) is, to my mind, dangerous hubris. Focusing on CO2 emissions and telling YOU how YOU should be behaving diverts attention away from the real and pressing environmental problems we should be addressing. Such questions as, how much plastic have you thrown away today?

.

Climate change is a fact. Climate change is man's fault? Bollocks.

[Richmond Clements]

.

Climate change is a fact. Climate change is man's fault? Bollocks.

So why do you think scientists, like Mikey here, are all lying?

[Dandontdare]

or why it's impossible to find ANY qualified climate scientsts who are not funded by the oil industry or climate-denier groups who agrees with you?

[Theblazeuk]

More carbon dioxide = more plants = bigger harvests = more food.

No... just... no. No.

[Jim_Campbell]

Climate change is a fact. Climate change is man's fault? Bollocks.

*Sigh*

1) The planet was significantly warmer and had a significantly higher CO2 content in the atmosphere in the distant mists of pre-history. These are scientific facts.

2) Over many millions of years, billions of tonnes of CO2 were absorbed by mainly plants that weren't released back into the atmosphere upon the death of those organisms by normal processes of decomp because those plants became fossil fuels instead, leaving that carbon sequestered underground, until we took it upon ourselves to dig those fossil fuels up and burn them, returning that long-sequestered CO2 to the atmosphere. These are also scientific facts.

If you are suggesting that you cannot draw a line between points 1) and 2) and logically, reasonably infer that restoring the planet's atmosphere to a composition similar to that which existed when the planet was much warmer may well result in the planet becoming much warmer then I have no idea what to say to you.

[Theblazeuk]

I find it really baffling that human influence on climate change is 'bollocks' but magnetic energy, life force and the ether are credible in the slightest. I also find it baffling that you can look over the Meg's walls and out into the Cursed Earth and have any doubt about man-made climate change.... (and incidentally how much plastic have you thrown away today is actually tied quite closely to carbon emissions).

However on a less fanatically stubborn subject:

How about 'Pedal Prisons' where your inmates can make a bob or two on an exercise bike wired up to push juice into the National Grid?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel

It's been done mate

[TordelBack]

I know I keep droning on about this, but...

TLS believes that the majority of scientist falsify and/or ignore results so their work maintains a party line in order to keep their careers and income ticking over.  Nothing they say is reliable, and we should give far greater credence to a tiny number of voices of dissent.  The climate change narrative is part of an overall system of socio-political and economic control and/or incompetence that transcends this issue and makes it quasi-irrelevant, especially when tied to a certain intrinsic humility when it comes to humanity' puissance as agents in an infinitely larger environment.

That's fine, it's a challenging position he's arrived at after much thought.  It's totally wrong, but it's a position.

However.

Given that this position contends that the Sun or other external forcing factors are by far the most significant driver over the (apparently coincidental) astonishingly rapid warming of our global climate, and that we have no control whatsoever over this, why would trying to reduce what supposedly tiny additional impact humanity makes be a bad thing? 

I have no problem with suggesting ANY other methods for achieving the goal of reducing carbon release across the board, but I just cannot see what is wrong with the goal itself, even from TLS' particular position.  If anything constantly questioning the established facts and best-fit theory only continues to drag all attention away from other critical environmental and other issues and focus on a debate that should have been over long ago.