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Changing your biking habits cos of climate change

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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 12:17 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Undinist wrote:
If you think you know better than peer-reviewed research, good luck!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261


Wow! So what you're saying is that killing all the injuns was a good thing as it lead to re-forestation Laughing So all we need to do now is go on a genocidal killing spree in South America and we can sort out Climate Change Twisted Evil

I've really learnt something today, thanx!
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Suntan Sid
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PostPosted: 12:28 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Assuming you believe that CO2 emissions are adversely affecting the climate.

Between them, China, USA, India and Russia produce more than half of all worldwide CO2 emissions.
Over the last three decades only Russia have managed to reduce their CO2 emissions, the other three have managed to increase their CO2 emissions, over the same time period.
Until China, USA and India decide to take action, the rest of the world is just pissing in the wind!

Foregoing your, ICE, motorcycle or car in the UK would amount to nothing more than an, empty, political sentiment!
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Kris
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PostPosted: 13:02 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/#622ca6f727ba

Anyway, to answer OP - no.
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 13:32 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kris wrote:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/#622ca6f727ba

Anyway, to answer OP - no.


Because a few scientists disagree with the consensus? Nah. As has been said plenty of times before it's not about the change in climate, but the rate of change which is fairly easily plottable from the most basic of data going back for hundreds of years.

It's all very well saying "Well India do X and the US do Y!" but if India jumped off a cliff would you do it? Seriously, it's a terrible argument. So we can't immediately take action and fix everything, but there's no point having a process if we can't start. So each change we make is incremental but it does make a difference.

I have recently changed my electricity tariff to a completely renewable one. I don't have any illusions that now my house will somehow be hooked up to a huge wind turbine, but I have some small confidence that the money I spend on electricity will in fact go towards renewable energy projects.

It's also fair to say that burning fossil fuels also produces other nasty side effects other than just CO2. Nitrous oxides can be nasty, sulfur dioxides, soot etc. So even if we do move away from CO2 emitting energy over time, and we make renewables work, and THEN we find out climate change is all nonsense, will we still have a net positive? You bet.
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Polarbear
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PostPosted: 14:12 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Suntan Sid wrote:
Assuming you believe that CO2 emissions are adversely affecting the climate.

Between them, China, USA, India and Russia produce more than half of all worldwide CO2 emissions.
Over the last three decades only Russia have managed to reduce their CO2 emissions, the other three have managed to increase their CO2 emissions, over the same time period.
Until China, USA and India decide to take action, the rest of the world is just pissing in the wind!

Foregoing your, ICE, motorcycle or car in the UK would amount to nothing more than an, empty, political sentiment!


Exactly right and India and China are going to do very little while they have billions to feed and keep happy.

Too many people and thats not going to change.

In Britain we might be doing our bit to get greener but we are still building houses on green field sites because we haven't got enough. Green field rules have been torn up just to facilitate this. In MK the Parks Trust have been told to hand over leisure sites to the council for development. Our green and pleasant land isn't quite as green and pleasant as it was.

But hey, we are going electric Thumbs Up
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Kris
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PostPosted: 14:33 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/cloud-seeding-weather-control-manipulate-effects-chemicals-climate-change-a8160146.html

10 years ago I was called a conspiracy theorist for claiming they were messing around with clouds which affects CO2 data massively. Now..it's all admitted. Go figure.


Anyway, climate science has been politicised. Report findings were already concluded - and data modified to suit the results that were 'required'. Any scientists not bowing to the new 'climate religion' doctrine were ousted, harassed and bullied.


Bleugh, do what you want. I bought a ZZR14 Thumbs Up
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 14:44 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kris wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

10 years ago I was called a conspiracy theorist for claiming they were messing around with clouds which affects CO2 data massively. Now..it's all admitted. Go figure.


It's admitted that cloud seeding is done? Or it's admitted that cloud seeding affects CO2 data. One is not the same as the other.

I would be very surprised if cloud seeding is relevant to CO2 data, and even so, why is CO2 data important when we can estimate how much CO2 we output, and correlate that with global temperature data.

Also, cloud seeding is not exactly something we can do reliably at this point. It's more of a sort of spray and pray type deal.

Genuine confusion with this to be honest. The trick is to be honest with oneself. If you're looking for reasons to justify continuing emitting large levels of CO2 because (for example) you're really into motorcycles, then that's a bad reason to dismiss the climate change consensus. It's a bit like Brexit. I'd love to believe that leaving the EU will leave us better off... rule Brittania etc blah blah, but nobody can show figures or evidence that tells me that is true.

Don't believe what you want to believe, believe what the evidence tells you (and not just a hand picked selected tiny subset of evidence that has political influence).
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 14:52 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's so sad that politics has now crept in to the General Bike Chat forum Sad
Is nothing sacred?! Mad
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Robby
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PostPosted: 21:19 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have changed some things, and will be changing more.

The daily bike is Euro 4, for the air quality side rather than the CO2 side. I changed the exhausts on it, but made sure the replacements were still Euro 4 homologated, with cats.

Now that I'm moving to a house with a garage (and plug socket in the garage), I'm toying with getting a Zero for my daily commute in the next couple of years. Partly for the emissions, mostly because I want to and I like how electric vehicles make power (lots, now).

Electric car is likely in 3 years too, when the next generation should be coming along and the current generation will depreciate like last year's technology.
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Bhud
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PostPosted: 21:37 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Imagine a motocross park out "in the middle of nowhere". Except there's no such thing as nowhere - it's a place. There is demand for housing as the population keeps growing. A developer recognises this, and decides to build a residential rabbit warren right next to the motocross park. His architect uses lively pastel colours, places his 3D models of buildings at angles to each other, making nice curvy streets, etc. with just one goal in mind: make as many individual properties as possible within a space. It looks good on paper. The walls on these properties are ultra-thin. The windows are reduced in size. Even the doors and door frames are "compact".

The developer likes it. The profit he anticipates on one unit sale is twice as much as he sets aside for his "foreign aid" budget. Foreign aid? Well, language is an interesting thing. New words enter into popular parlance all the time. Such as "maisonette", for example. In this case, local councillors are greatly "aided" by a fully paid-for trip to a property developers' convention for a week, in Marseilles. They will be truly dazzled ("dazzled" - that's another good one) by what they see and experience there. They will surely appreciate a little taste of the good stuff, all the better to understand and promote the "vision for the future" they (oh sorry - I mean the developers) have for their town. One taste is never enough. Thereafter, they will virtuously proclaim the virtue of not having open recreational spaces, roads, etc.

The whole shebang is excellent value for money. It costs the developer a mere £30000 all-in. The way is clear and the design is approved. The big diesel trucks and heavy machinery had already come to town. The lousy old trees, oaks, alders, hawthorns, elms, rowans, beeches, etc. are quickly "cleared" (got to love that word). The councillors and the mayor appear for a photo opportunity in the local paper as they plant a new copper beech sapling within the new development. The developer's enterprise is a big success. He builds it and people quickly snap up the new properties. One of the area's unique selling points is that it has 2 good schools in it. Therefore young couples take on as much debt as they can muster, and move into these properties and produce more kids. They don't even care about the motocross track next door. It's an entry-level property. A way to get on the magical property ladder to Beaconsfield. Except, of course, hardly anyone gets from that position to Beaconsfield. Their only hope is that their children might. Vicarious living is a psychological mainstay of people who have no life. What they really get in their rabbit hutch is a 50-60 hour work week. During which, of course, they need to sleep, to keep this dream of the endless hamster wheel alive.

Then, sooner rather than later, someone who feels rather put-upon has a conversation with someone else. Its real meaning (not couched in mensch-speak) would go like this:

"We're all in it together, aren't we. We're moving forward as a nation. Progress is always good, isn't it? We belong to something bigger than ourselves. The greater good depends on the principle that the will of the many should override the will of the few, and definitely of the one. The police are there to protect us, not to keep us in life. We have to believe that. Santa Claus is real. And won't someone do something about that noise and the smell of exhaust fumes from those bikes at the motocross track? I don't understand it at all. Don't they realise, my daughter Beata has asthma. I don't have any hobbies at all - I am more deserving than those people. We're all supposed to be working towards something I can't define or articulate. Obedience to the rat-race and the pointless, endless reproduction of my DNA is a way of life for me - I'll try my best to indoctrinate my children with this, and everyone else should follow it or else it threatens/undermines my narrative."

The above conversation is overheard by an old man. It plays on his mind because he was a young father once. Now his children are 16. He goes back home and is berated by his children who, amazingly, know everything about everything. They tell him off for everything he eats. They chide, steak is killing the planet, you boomer! Your plastic bags are choking dolphins, how dare you! The old man is upset. His children are the world to him. He gives up a lot of things. Goes back to his garage and there's his old Triumph. One thing that kept him going and brings him back to carefree, joyful days. Days when "freedom" was oxygen. Of course, he realises, that was all wrongthink now. He is truly penitent. His children would tell him, 2+2=5, and his love for them would have him accept it on his knees. However, there's always that (guilty?) element of doubt. Why?

In about 2 weeks, the motocross track gets closed. Guess what happens to it? Yes, the owner sold it to Mr Barratt. Mr Barratt, of course, isn't a man. He's a legal personality owned by multinational billionaire investment companies that pay no tax anywhere. Throwing down a few peanuts for the monkeys, of course.

In answer to the OP, the answer is NO.
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Freddyfruitba...
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PostPosted: 21:56 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bhud wrote:
In answer to the OP, the answer is NO.

Tef-sock? Shocked
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Undinist
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PostPosted: 22:09 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

To answer my own OP, I'm not making any changes. I think climate change now has an unstoppable momentum and it's too late to prevent irreversible calamities such as the permafrost melting and the stopping of the Gulf Stream. A great many major rivers are drying up and the forest fire season is lengthening. Desertification is accelerating in huge swathes of the southern hemisphere. In addition to all this it seems likely that parts of the food chain will collapse because of insect decline. The scary part is that ocean currents and insect declines are not well understood. Every week seems to bring new information, all of it bad. But the politicians and the people are still arguing over the things that have been well understood for twenty years, such as CO2 levels and land temperatures. The numbers of climate refugees will grow and we'll soon have vast new camps for them and fences to stop them heading north. The only good thing I've read is that Siberia is expected to be warm enough for farming. So hooray for that. If Russia loses influence after the West stops using their gas, they can bully us with wheat instead, Hopefully the UK will be kept safe by the Channel, and new food manufacturing technology will replace imported food. We shall see. The irony is that the British started it all by giving birth to the Industrial Revolution.
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Polarbear
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PostPosted: 22:23 - 27 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

The only way something will happen that is big enough to make a difference is to have a world government not answerable to the people.

While we are made up of bickering nations whose leaders have to try and keep the people relatively happy they are never going to do enough to change anything. FFS Brazil is still burning the Amazon rain forest despite everyone and the ships cat knowing what the potential outcome will be.

In UK it's like the Severn barrage project. It would give us huge amounts of clean electricity but no government will start it because a) the cost is so big many other things would have to be sacrificed to do it and b) the eco warriors would go mad about the lost ecology if it went ahead.

Even a totalitarian state like China could not implement population controls, what hope places like India.

The only way is a government that doesn't care what the people think or want. A government that will do what it thinks is best and sod the people. A bit like the EU Whistle
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trevor saxe-coburg-gotha
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PostPosted: 10:54 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Undinist wrote:
If you think you know better than peer-reviewed research, good luck!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261


Peer-reviewed research is far from infallible. Thinking people should at the very least regard it as potentially flawed, and must not internalise the notion that their own knowledge and expertise is necessarily beneath it. The academic community can be insular and arrogant. I don't advocate knee-jerk cynicism but I definitely think a measure of informed scepticism is healthy.
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 11:36 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

trevor saxe-coburg-gotha wrote:
Undinist wrote:
If you think you know better than peer-reviewed research, good luck!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379118307261


Peer-reviewed research is far from infallible. Thinking people should at the very least regard it as potentially flawed, and must not internalise the notion that their own knowledge and expertise is necessarily beneath it. The academic community can be insular and arrogant. I don't advocate knee-jerk cynicism but I definitely think a measure of informed scepticism is healthy.


It's not one peer reviewed study though.

18 organisations in the US alone have studies and statements that support climate change. Thats in one of the most politically sensitive and climate change deny-y countries in the world.

There's this idea that Scientists are insular. Perhaps Scientists are insular because they try to explain their results to people from non scientific backgrounds and then those results get rejected? The majority of people don't have the scientific backing to understand the ramifications of the results. Saying that experts don't know everything is ridiculous. There are probably some politically motivated scientists, but to have a consensus on this level? It's unprecedented, even for some 'settled' scientific ideas.

It's like saying "I don't need a lawyer to represent me at my murder trial, pah lawyers don't know everything." Nobody knows everything, but experts in their areas are just that, experts in that area. Unless you too are an expert in that area, it's hard to argue that you can see flaws in what they are saying, especially with this level of consensus.

I think people do understand the ramifications of what is happening, and I think it's almost too horrifying to contemplate, so they comfort themselves with the idea that the consensus is wrong. People should not comfort themselves to the point where they bury their heads in the sand.
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 11:47 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

chickenstrip wrote:
It's so sad that politics has now crept in to the General Bike Chat forum Sad
Is nothing sacred?! Mad


Chickenstrip, I did expect better from you - although obviously it's hard to gauge the level of flippancy in your comment. The only people who make climate change about politics are those who choose to deny it for their own ends. Climate change is about science, nothing more. Quite a large proportion of senior climate change deniers in the US believe that God won't let the climate change, so it's all ok. If you believe that, then IMO you have issues. A lot of them invest in coal, oil and other CO2 emitting industries, so it's purely about keeping their financial status quo. Although, at this point some of them are so rich, does it really make a difference?

Also massive irony to the phrase 'is nothing sacred?'. Let me tell you what SHOULD be sacred. The only place in the entire universe that can support and sustain humanity. If that's not sacred, then nothing is. And I am now quite angry at myself for saying that, as I sound like a hippy, but it is nevertheless true.
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LustyLew
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PostPosted: 12:07 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have no doubt in my mind that the increaing human population has had a significant impact on the planet.

Have I changed my habits? A bit, but not much.

I will continue to ride my motorbike into Central London. I will continue to use my petrol car.

When I cnaged car I purchased something more fuel efficient. I use it to drive long distances. We do not have a reliable infrasturcture to power eletric cars over long distances.

If the govornment and environmentalists want us to get out of our vehicles, they need to radically re-think public transport. But that's costs money that no one wants to spend.

It's easier to call us all planet rapists and blame joe public for the planets ills.

I doubt that my consicous choices to limit plastic usage is gong to save the world.

It's a complex problem that just one change is not going to fix.
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doggone
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PostPosted: 12:35 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

It isn't even an established fact that CO2 increase causes a temperature increase in the real world, the mechanism claimed to make it happen is unproven.
It's clear that notably NASA is constantly manipulating data sets to produce the *expected* rate of warming with the past particularly 1930s getting 'cooler' on a monthly basis.
We also see deliberate endpoint bias from choosing a cool start point usually 70s when "new ice age" was the climate fear - rather than looking at a longer period from the 40s or 50s as that reduces or eliminates the warming trend.
In short any aspects of climate science show snake oil and cultist tendencies, that isn't how science works.

Look at Arctic Ice which was to be gone by 2007/2013/whenever.
Still there, after a step down probably due to changed circulation during a strong el nino it has barely changed in ten years .

In recent years squawking 'emergency' and 'denier' when anything is resented against the so-called consensus reinforces my view that everything about it has become hi-jacked by extremists and is now so embedded in policy that it is impossible to say hang on we're not sure about this.

Anyone in Academia who doesn't toe the line risks having their career destroyed, almost every aspect of policy is now obliged to contain a few lines about climate change, sustainability and the other meaningless but correct buzzwords.
It's like in the past having to say by the Grace of God or In the name of The King or you were probably ignored as uncouth..

A creeping madness has taken over and is not far from destroying our society completely.
If they get their way meat off the menu, majority of UK farmland not suitable for Arable effectively vandalised by covering with valueless trees. Chemical inputs through the roof as organic manures and grass rotation no longer viable?

We already are somehow supposed to be replacing millions of ICU vehicles with environmentally costly electric versions and charging them on imaginary beefed up networks.
The only way all this extra power might be acceptably produced is by wind turbines - only to meet demand they need to increase from about 10,000 to at least 300,000. Each one uses upwards of 200t of steel and the CO2 used to make and transport the steel exceeds the CO2 'saved' by the power it will produce.
Oh and if it's not windy you are stuffed sorry.
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Kris
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PostPosted: 12:53 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Solar irradiance against time:

https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/files/2011/09/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction-1.png

Anyway, off to enjoy the ZZR. Thumbs Up
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 14:04 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

If anyone were stupid enough to ask: "Yes, I'm in favour of Climate Change and more of it!"
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trevor saxe-coburg-gotha
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PostPosted: 14:05 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

MarJay wrote:
People should not comfort themselves to the point where they bury their heads in the sand.


It felt to me that this is exactly what I was saying. It's strange how these discussions flip around so quickly.

As unpalatable and irrational as it'll sound, I sometimes think its very possible to accept science as a religion (I thought it was funny that you capitalised the "s" in science - like xtians use an uppercase "g" for god), and to treat its findings as necessarily sacrosanct.

PArt of what I'm saying is that complacency and head-burying can happen in all contexts. Yes, of course, the scientific method should be underpinned by curiosity, rationality, consistency, and so on. And, yes, those all do seem to require the opposite of burying heads in the sand. But if you read stuff like Ludwik Fleck, Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn - even or perhaps especially, Paul Feyeraband), it's very apparent that science *can* become ossified.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to actually suggest this, but it seems eminently possible to me that science is at its healthiest when degrees of consensus are comparatively low - not high. For in those phases, scientists must continuously confront the possibility that their empirical evidence is not necessarily final - and they'll be more rigorous in all their scientific work because they know and expect their peers to be scrutinising their findings very diligently. Why? Because its more likely that A.N. Other scientist will have a different - perhaps even competing - view, and will be more rigorous when considering their peers' findings.

The ironic implication of that does appear to be that once a field of scientific inquiry acquires high levels of consensus, it may have begun to bury its head in the sand. Am I saying that's what's happening now, with respect to the work around climate change? No I don't think I'd quite go that far. But I do sometimes think there's the spectre of a new orthodoxy that mightn't necessarily give rise to the most helpful set of solutions.

For instance, I sometimes think that electric vehicles are simply passing the problem up the chain, when there's insufficient development in power generation. I also wonder if clearing the decks of old vehicles will involve ripping more ore out of the planet, smelting it in toxic ways, and creating more problems than if we simply welded up the old crap (a la Cuba) and carried on along those lines - being frugal, making do and mending. As opposed to scrapping, burying, and shouting 'in with the new' when there's no proper infrastructure preceding it. But, having said that, and as was mentioned in a post further up the page, in the short-term we've got cities full of particulates that're shortening the lives of everyone living there.

On balance, I'll concede that knee-jerk cynicism and resultant outright rejection of climate change is at best unintelligent and at worst, dangerous. But I won't venerate science to the point where I think normal, thinking people shouldn't treat its conclusions with a degree of scepticism. It's the best we've got - but that doesn't make it infallible. Fuck me, it doesn't even mean it's necessarily that good. Perhaps the best you could say for it is it's the least bad.
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chickenstrip
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Joined: 06 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: 14:17 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

MarJay wrote:
chickenstrip wrote:
It's so sad that politics has now crept in to the General Bike Chat forum Sad
Is nothing sacred?! Mad


Chickenstrip, I did expect better from you - although obviously it's hard to gauge the level of flippancy in your comment.


It wasn't climate change I was commenting on. It was your dragging in of the Brexit vs EU debate.

Btw, be careful about what you expect from me Laughing
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Kris
World Chat Champion



Joined: 03 Feb 2002
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PostPosted: 14:47 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

Easy-X wrote:
If anyone were stupid enough to ask: "Yes, I'm in favour of Climate Change and more of it!"


As if anyone were stupid enough to not realise the climate has always changed..

Anyway,

"Variations in the sun's intensity have also been fingered as a driver of climate change. According to Joanna Haigh at Imperial College London, about a third of the warming since 1850 can be explained by solar activity."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/jun/30/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment2
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chickenstrip
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Joined: 06 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: 14:54 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm a nobody. I have little influence one way or another on all these big issues. I'm too old and dyed-in-the-wool, not to mention battered and broken, to change.

So you lot go ahead and worry about climate change. You might have noticed I've made little to no input in this discussion here or elsewhere. To me, it's something for governments to worry about. If they say I can't ride my ICE motorcycle anymore, so be it. I'm just glad I got to have the fun I did with them. But I'm not going to get into heated (geddit? Laughing ) arguments about this stuff. I've got more pressing and personal problems to worry about.
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MarJay
But it's British!



Joined: 15 Sep 2003
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PostPosted: 15:03 - 28 Nov 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote

chickenstrip wrote:
It wasn't climate change I was commenting on. It was your dragging in of the Brexit vs EU debate.

Btw, be careful about what you expect from me Laughing


If anything can be argued to be a fanatical religion, it has to be brexitism but I take your point and it was just meant as an analogy. Perhaps a poor one, but one nevertheless.
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Old Thread Alert!

The last post was made 4 years, 122 days ago. Instead of replying here, would creating a new thread be more useful?
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