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Quote: How climate change may just alter your shopping this weekend......sure it will cost more when the elites global taxes and tagging kicks in :)Heres a handy wee 4 minute vid worth watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPk2mRcFDW0
This must rank as one of the most crass articles ever to come out of the Scotsman officesIts the biggest load of rubbish Ive ever read!Example, it quotes Blacks (Millets and O'Neill brands) closing 45 stores 'cited Britain's increasingly erratic climate as one of the reasons behind a sharp dip in sales'. But then goes on to say 'that the chain has problems which extend beyond the weather' and 'Britain's dry summer, combined with the World Cup and the lack of a Glastonbury Festival, saw a slide in sales of tents'What has the World cup and the Glastonbury Festival to do with climate. If anything having a dry summer would have encouraged the camping brigade to get out there. Sounds more like Blacks, just have bad management
Can we one day see a truthful headline which includes the words "climate change"?
One correct headline would be "Some shops struggle with climate change". I suppose alarmism trumps honesty for newspaper sales.
"How climate change increases sales of The Scotsman" - now there's an honest headline!
Rubbish. Shops across the world stock all sorts of goods for all sorts of weather. California has much greater extremes of weather and temperature than Scotland, and I don't see sales here suffering. Might it just be something to do with lack of vision among shop managers? When I am in Scotland I am usually based in Aberdeen, where the shops always seem to be full of stuff nobody would want to buy. It's certainly a long time since I found any clothing there that appeals to me - and I'm not some trendy young thing, but a middle-aged man!!
when europeans take sartorial advice from north americans hell truly will freeze over!
Hey Scotsman. Give me/us an education on the peat that assures that marvelous Scottish nectar Scotch its distinctive flavor. Was it not created 3,000 years ago during a number of very warm centuries? SUV's and smoke stacks 3,000 years ago? I don’t think so. Give me/our ovoid clusters of receptor cells found mainly in the epithelium of the tongue a break and facilitate global warming to insure peat is replenished to provide the world and my taste buds the Scottish flavor I/we prefer, please...
Amazing how the distortions are repeated as fact over and over again. Summers are not getting hotter, they have become more consistent and reliable, with less of the really cold, grotty summers we had a few years ago. Winters are much less extreme, thank goodness. It's only 150 years since we came out of the little ice age with annual UK temperatures of less than 8 degrees C, the same sort of temperatures they get in Norway. That means lots of seriously sub zero stuff. Was that normal? Is that what we want? A lot less energy is used when we get the solar heating we have had over the last 50 years. What a load of nonsense these journalist produce and actually, one assumes, get paid for it.
May I just say that I have never been in Tesco's in a "thin-strapped dress". And this weekend, global warming or not, I will still not be going to Tesco's in a "thin-strapped dress".
Clif #6 - Peat doesn't form because of warm summers but because of cold winters. When the plants die in autumn, if it is cold and wet all winter long, the plants never rot but are compressed with each successive 'crop' to form peat.
What nobody seems to want to discuss is the archaeological evidence that Britain was MUCH warmer during the last 5,000 years. They recently found almost 2000 hut circles on Dartmoor - with extensive cultivationt there. You could not have lived there over the last century - unless your in the SAS who train there.
The Romans grew wine grapes in York; Iron Age farmers grew barley at 1500 ft in perthshire.
Why was it so much warmer? No grants in answering that I;m afraid.
Yes there has been a subtle change in climate as any gardener would tell you, the seasons seem to be accelerated by 1 month this can be seen in early spring flowers and late autumn leave drop. Guinness sales have been in decline for at least 3 years nothing to do with climate change more to do with a change in the age, and choice of the drinking public of today. Tents sales in decline, is more to do with people going abroad more often in the year than they used to.Clothes sales down, well if they stocked the styles that people wanted in the first place instead of being dictated by the stupid so called fashion houses they might see a change.People not wanting to go to the high street because of the cold in spite that there are car parks, buses are well heated and stores are nice and warm. Bad management of stores is the stores biggest problem not climate change.
quote/Ms MORIARTY said: "The main problem is that it is so hard to predict where we will be in the future. This season the shops were full of winter coats, hats, gloves and scarves and now, after a mild winter, retailers are having to shift unsold stock at a reduced price.
No sh#t sherlock sorry folks couldn't resist it.
Too many people have made a good career on the back of "climate change" for us to place any credence on what they say. Thirty years ago much the same headlines were applied to Global cooling - a new ice age, its already too late to avert it, etc.So we had a very mild winter - last year, according to the article, we had a late Spring - clear consistent evidence of climate change, you think? Next thing we know, the climate change will be allegedly man-made!
That will be princes st thats boarded up!
what a load of nonsense !!
Well done Alistair Jamieson.
This article looks like it was lifted straight out of the National Enquirer, a fantastic US-based publication whose staple fodder is of the ilk "Martians abduct entire Mexican village". This piece fits right in there; perhaps Mr. Jamieson could syndicate it and bring some revenue to what will soon be a cash-strapped Hootsmon if they continue in this vein.
[11] Twowheel loon: Got it in one.
If its not the arrogance of journos who think they know about complex matters such as climatology, then it must be the editorship that is to blame for sanctioning this dross.
I think its time the Scotsman faced up to its wider moral and ethical responsibilities and made some kind of statement on its editorial policies. If it goes the way I think, a lot of us will be moving to (yep, I can and will say it) ... the Herald.
"A spokeswoman for retail analysts TNS Wordpanel said sales of shorts were due to reach ten million in 2007 compared to only seven million last year."
How astonishing! I just WISH I could find such an exciting job. "What do YOU do for your country?" "Oh, me? I count shorts".
FASCINATING line of work.
I prefer short shorts myself.
Apparently "It is impossible to underestimate the importance of weather for shops,", but I think I have just done it! And I didn't even have to think very hard.
#15 BoswellWhat Mexican village did the Matians abduct, i'm going to Mexico in June if it's sill there.
I will never go out in Tecso's "thin strapped dresses" - my wife won't let me!
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Can I sum up the comments: a very boring story that everyone has read!
The climate is changing and that means the government will need to tax people more, it will not stop the climate changing but they will at least have another excuse to take more of our money.
Some newspapers can make a story out of thin air, it doesn't even need to be hot.
Here is a list of the things which are said to be caused by Global Warminghttp://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Someone had better tell them they have missed one!
At least some people are still brave enough to question the "settled will of the roasters"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinio...
some of the comments are priceless
It is more likely that the problems facing high street stores are due to their buying policies - the assumption that certain items can only be sold at a certain time of year is becoming ridiculous. Try buying a spare pair of school trousers three weeks into term - everyone is "sold out" - but with all the talk of people taking exotic holidays, they still do not have swimwear in the winter, or coats in the summer when some go for skiing holidays.The high street stores need to stabilise their stock, or specialist internet sites will be taking all their custom.
#2 - Edward - I'm with you - what a load of utter tosh .....
Heavy coats are making way for thin-strapped dresses ....... oh really
heavy drinks such as Guinness are being exchanged for lighter tipples such as rose wine .... uhuh - so you say.
Taken journalistic licence a bit far this time.
Come on Scotsman. Read it to yourselves and then try to work out HOW this ever got 'printed', never mind being a "top story"?
And may I just suggest that 'The Outdoor Stores' move up my way? We have quite a lot of 'weather' and few shops with well-priced-goods ...one can never have too many pairs of stout boots and waterproof outfits!
Well folks, you can thank your lucky stars that you can say these things without fear of being 'moderated' as is the case with most of the nationals.
I agree that the article plays on only one excuse the retailer used to defend its position because it is flavour of the month, or is it decade?
As far as waterproofs are concerned they can send all their surplus stuff my way, please!
Top story - Global climate catastrophe - we are all going to be wearing thin-strapped dresses.
Oh the humanity.
If I wore a thin strap dress in Blackpool no one would notice.
Shorts as a sure sign of global warming? They have just been in fashion for the last couple of years for young women, winter with tights, summer with white mottled legs. And when have we ever listened to what forecasters say in this country? That's right, we haven't because they never get it right, so if the fashion industry are planning their business around the soothsayers, more fool them!But wait, I do have proof of global warming. At Christmas I bought a mini fir tree in a pot from M&S and after the season thought I would shove it outside to take its chances, despite the label saying that it wouldn't tolerate temperatures of less than 14 degrees Celsius. Well, it's March now and it is going from strength to strength, which must mean that it has been more than 14 degrees celsius every day since December in Edinburgh otherwise it would be a shrivelled twig by now, right?? Has to be the global warming, eh? Its a sign surely? What, you're not convinced? Damn! Well, I don't care. I'm going to sell the story to The Scotsman, they'll believe me and might even take a photo of me standing next to my fir tree out back....in my shorts...because I now have 40 pairs of them since the shops are so full of them, what with the global warming and all!
#9 Tweedmouth, to#6 - Peat doesn't form because of warm summers but because of cold winters. When the plants die in autumn, if it is cold and wet all winter long, the plants never rot but are compressed with each successive 'crop' to form peat.Why was it so much warmer? No grants in answering that I;m afraid.
Opps and THANKS!! Guess I'll not use a Scottish tour guide’s climatic data for my defenses/references again. Got that info as I motored through those beautiful Scottish mountains that per the book “The Little Ice Age”, the tour guide, and your comment supported agriculture prior to the most recent Ice Age of around 1350 to 1850 or so. I have attempted to google that Peat info but have found no sites but in that tour guide pitch within a paragraph, he cited global warming. Do you have a good peat reference I can source? And you are spot on with the grants comment for sure. #9 Tweedmouth But be assured that clusters of receptor cells found mainly in the epithelium of my tongue remain inclined toward Scotch!!
"Last year, forecasters were certain of a bitterly cold winter. It never arrived,"
But they can predict global warming & climate change with much more certainty - honest!
I fully expect the next Scotsman front page headline to be "Global Warming Ate My Hamster!"
I just wonder if the rover research machines that earth sent to MARS has anything to do with the 2.5 degree C increase in temperature on that planet in the last 20 years. But for the MSM to report this would be telling the truth, and that is something that the MSM has forgotten how to do.
Global warming is the current fad, just as global cooling was 30 years ago (http://toryheaven.blogspot.com/2007/02/global-cooling.html). When will we all learn to calm down a bit and view things from a longer term perspective?
Global Nonsense!! Nonsense to bolster the One Worlder's call for the "carbon tax"...A propaganda campaign of deception, double talk, pseudo science and 'mouth breather' appeal...Al Gore and the Oscars...Draft Al Gore for president campaign... (What is it? Five homes and thousands of heated and cooled square feet for this piece of Eco-trash to exist on Moma Earth?) The duplicity of the Neo- Cons is perhaps matched and trumped by that of the cud-chewing trendies who prattle on about man-caused global warming...
And then there is the mad creature at the Weather Channel who wants the American Meterological Society to yank the certification from any weatherman who doesn't tow the 'man-causes-global-warming' line....and lest we forget the American talking head who compares denial of the latest bit of frothy weather fear-mongering to Holocaust denial...yet won't address the melting of the polar ice on Mars...perhaps its those little green men in their SUVs....ZoomZoomZoom!!
Scottish men in kilts...ok, but in thin strapped dresses?...now that's pushin' it.
The climate change crunch could be 50 years away but the energy supply crunch could be a lot closer.
I've just been reworking some data that suggests a liquid fuel supply shortage and therefore much higher prices could hit in 5 years...
Scary stuff that begs the question as to why there isn't major investment going on into alternatives...
Oh - hang on .. I forget that there is... Mainly in the USA .....
Clearly the writer of this article has never been south of the Scottish border. If he came to Florida, which is never cold, he'd have to wear a shirt and hat because if he didn't he'd fry under the blazing sun.
Speaking of your mild winter a year ago, Russia had a terribly cold winter at the same time that you were having a mild one; and energy supplies to the rest of Europe were threatened as I recall, because the Russians feared they'd need their export energy just to keep warm.
As for global warming, it's a lot of bosh. The earth goes through cycles that no scientists understand yet. 7500 years ago, a supervolcano exploded in the far east and the world was plunged into a volcanic winter lasting 1000 years. It could happen again at any time, and if so, most of humanity would starve to death. I'd almost wish such a calamity just to see the egg all over Al Gore's face.
That climate change is "a cycle", it "happens many times" thousands of years ago. Again, "pollution" has nothing to do with it. There are "about 160,000 glaciers" around the world. Most have "never been visisted" or "measured" by man. The "great majority" of these glaciers "are growing", not melting.
#38 Dick: Yes, alternative energy research has been sputtering along here since the 1970s. However, there are some major players like Aramco that want to keep the status quo and will do anything to maintain it.
One unanticipated effect of 9/11 has been a national sense of being totally fed up with the arabs and a firm desire to rid ourselves of any energy dependence whatsoever on such an obscene group of tyrants, pederasts, torturers, misogynists, and religious psychopaths. And we'll do it. And they know that full well. 9/11 taught us all we ever need to know about the so-called "moderate" or (equally absurd) "friendly" oil nations.
Martha...... You'll be pleased to know then that in California alone last year some $2bn was invested by the US VCs and others in clean tech/energy start-ups and early stage companies..
In Scotland I think we invested around $1m ...
Dick: I lived in California for over a decade. Yes, there are numerous alternative energy start-ups there, and in fact California may well lead the nation in that endeavor. But they aren't the only players. Every big automaker is racing to develop a hydrogen-based engine, universities like Cal Tech and MIT are doing likewise, and one of these days the technology will be invented to free us from the oil cartel.
In the meantime, we do as a nation lead the world in emissions control both in automobiles and factory chimneys. Our big challenge at this time, along with freeing ourselves from our automotive dependence on arab oil, is to reduce our energy dependence on coal, which is used to produce over 50 percent of the nation's electrical energy requirement. We have plenty of coal here, but as is well known, the by-products of burning it are undesirable.
it isn't just the Hootsmon: The Toronto Star had an article this morning titled along the lines of 'Consumerism is Dead' with the premise that buying mortar and bricks, then loading the inside up with piles of stuff is now passé. The Article then proceeded to babble on about how people are instead spending bazillions living on cruise ships or personal yachts, along flying around the globe on personal jets. What people? Not me. Not my neighbours. Oh...the ones in the thin-strapped dresses sipping the sparkling 18 year Highland Park ("lite" of course).
As for olive trees: maybe olive trees would always have grown in southern Britain but nobody ever tried it. There are small palm trees in Cornwall after all. The countries of the eastern mediterranean do experience cold and even snow in the winter, but the olives and palms survive.
England is actually a very temperate place to live, with temperatures only ranging between 32 F and 80 F (a spread of only 50 degrees) all year round. That's a far cry from the US which can and do vary from -40 F in our most northern cold states (not including Alaska) to over 110 F in the desert southwest (a range of well over 100 degrees). Olive trees grow in northern California, which does occasionally experience temperatures below 32 F, so why not in Britain, especially in a protected garden?
Menzies: if consumerism is dead, then maybe it's because people are just sick of "stuff." Maybe these people have discovered what their ancestors already knew: buying is no substitute for the pleasure and pride people experience in making what is needed, and maintaining instead of discarding. Craft stores are booming here, which just goes to show you that the impulse to create and produce something useful or beautiful with one's own hands has not died even in the developed world, even in America.
The article you quote is just another example of the atrocious journalism we all observe every day. The only people who spend a lot of time on cruise ships are called "employees of the cruise ship line" and the people who actually live on yachts for extended periods are called "rich." Yacht-owning wealthy people usually also have large homes on land, filled with stuff. There are a few middle class people who own boats big enough to live on, but these are so few and far between that I doubt that they are statistically significant. So what if in a city of over ten million, 1000 people live on boats in various marinas around the city? That's 0.0001 percent of the population.
While the current concern is about wearing "thin strapped dresses" in winter due to Global warming, if one reads the information on demographics and declining birth rates in the UK and Europe, the upcoming trend will be to the wearing of burkas.If you think climate change is an issue, think about upcoming changes due to demographis.
I never read such a load of crap in all my life.People walk 5 ysd from their house into their car and then walk maybe 100 yds from their cat to the store, restauarnt etc. Therefor there is no need for heavy winter coats anymore.As far as drinking habits, food etc. That change has been going on for years. When I moved from Scotland to England many years ago. You couldn't buy draught lager. Nowadays it'sd available everywhere and everyone is drinking it.This is just another load of scaremoungering crap
Edward 2 - if you had ever been to Glastonbury you would not have to ask that question!!!! It makes a BIG difference if it is raining or not.
Surely Global Warming is caused by the SNP?
Cliff # 32Re peat reference tryhttp://www.peatsociety.org/
One solution most of the pundits of global warming have overlooked is: The average person breaths out 800g of carbon monoxide each day given they take approximately 24,000 breaths.The worlds population is about 6.5 billion, if you worked that out it equates to 14 million tons of carbon monoxide each week being sent into the atmosphere.If everyone could be persuaded to stop breathing for one day a week or even one hour a day it would help our planet.
#50 Jiimpoo, Tillietudlem to Cliff # 32Re peat reference tryhttp://www.peatsociety.org/
Tillietudlem THANKS.. I only initiated a quick search and did not find any references yet to geological periods. I think I found that one before but as usual; the net can be a really black hole or like a crap shoot or as in poker playing drawing to an inside straight.
I will continue the search for that geological data but TKS for you effort!! Next time I'm in Scotland I'm determined to have that info to challenge the tour guide.... May even have to get down and dirty and go archeological at the local public library.
Global warming a fact? Sorry, but only according to the lunatic fringe is it a fact. There are serious scientific objections to the entire notion of global warming, and a consensus about it does NOT exist anywhere in the scientific community.
Pollution, on the other hand, is indeed a fact, and the worst offenders are the developing nations. And there are many kinds of pollution, including the electronic smog that we are bathed in all the time as more and more people on earth use wireless communications devices. India as a nation is hugely polluted by its enormous uncontrolled population and absolutely nothing is being done about that. Ditto for numerous central and south American, African and far Eastern nations.
Before all the moaning and hand-wringing over a theory-- that the earth is warming because of human action-- why doesn't somebody like Al Gore focus on birth control instead of the globalization of eco-tyranny? Answer: because whinging about an unproven theory like global warming is easy, whereas getting people to breed responsibly is very, very difficult and bound to have some serious setbacks in any plan that is attempted.
Just plain garbage. Looks like chaff counter Al Gore is writing another book and this is prepublicity for it.
Keep in mind folks. Money talks and bu**sh*t walks.
#58, if it is a cyclic thing, then why should big business do anything with their profits? The cycle will swing round again, and the cool will return whether businesses give up their profits or not.
I'm amazed at articles like this. As if ANYBODY can predict the changes that any amount of global warmng or global cooling would bring. ANY change in ANYTHING will also change buying habits. An aging population will mean different industries grow and others shrink. Fads bring about changes in buying habits. Some businesses and industries benefit; others don't.
Any change in the climate will do the same. Some industries will grow; others will shrink. But all of this baloney about how climate change will hurt the worldwide economy is bunk. Haven't humans proven that, given the freedom to act without government coercion, we always find a way to deal with change and turn it to our advantage.
I trust people, and because I trust people, I trust the free market system to cope with whatever the climate may throw us. What I don't trust is government to somehow know the best thing to do. If the NHS in Britain and the US government's response to Hurrican Katrina have taught us anything, it's that putting important decisions into the hands of a few political elites is a massively stupid idea. "We the people" can figure it out, working independently and freely. That's always been true, and it will always be true.
Trust people.
#52, Rennie from upstate NY.
You and I are reading the same research. I was amazed to find that the pendulum has swung between global cooling and global warming four times in the 20th Century. I used to live outside Plattsburgh; you anywhere around there?
I am visiting in May and June and reguards the "thin strapped dresses" as appropiate apparal. Don't you have midges?
Well if Bonny Scotland is getting that warm we might consider emigrating back from New Zealand. But I would not hold out much hope of a permanent good climate!
c.j. Bring over Avon Skin so Soft, midgies hate it.
Went into a pay toilet in Glasgow once in 1967, and missed summer.
"...Heavy coats are making way for thin-strapped dresses..."
This has got to be one of the silliest articles I've read in a long time. The average temperature goes up what a half a degree (or whatever it is) and people are throwing away their heavy coats in favor of thin-strapped dresses. I got back from doing a little shopping, no thin strapped dresses were in evidence though I did see all manner of coats. It was -12C and we're digging out of 20" snow storm (third or fourth one this year, I've lost count.)
Just noticed that the surname is the same as the Editor, are they related?
If recent "winters" are anything to go by, then I really have no objections to the effects of global warming. Actually, I seem to remember reading that the climate in London was much more sultry back in Roman times, however this was due to natural variations in climate and could not be attributed to increased CO2 emissions - well, they simply did not have the technology to produce such effects in those days.
If the Earth's orbit had been a few percent smaller than it is at present, or if the human race had reached its present level of technological development at a later stage in the life-cycle of the Sun (the Sun's energy output will increase in the future), we would not be speaking about global warming, as higher average temperatures would be considered to be the norm.
Perhaps we should be thinking in terms of achieving a balance between our efforts to control the effects of technological advances upon our environment, and our efforts to adapt to changes in climatic conditions. We are certainly not in a position to control our environment at present, however future scientific developments may enable us to control the climate here on Earth, and possibly also on other planets, at least to some extent. The prospect of terraforming on Mars may not seem quite so far fetched hundreds of years in the future.
I agree with Mike J. The human race will adapt to a changing environment. We may also adapt the environment to suit our purposes in the future. Anyone who can accurately predict the changes that may occur, and who can adapt their business model to take account of future changes, will be either well placed to accumulate substantial wealth or to put forward suggestions that will benefit humanity - assuming that anyone takes any notice of their predictions.
Martha & others on that side of the pond...
The US company I like is this one...
www.hydrogenenginecenter.com Smart cookies these guys..
Martha - yes the 9/11 effect is interesting but it's a pity I can't post graphs here... I have a beaut just done by one of my colleagues showing what's happening with liquid fuel supply not just from oil but from gas to liquids, all the biofuels etc... It's just a little scary and your guys at the DoE and the MMS people are now both beginning to understand that. In a nut shell supply is going to become a big issue probably earlier than everyone thought i.e 2010ish... That's why GWB made such a play about the problem of over dependence on Middle East oil.. The problem is of course that we should have been starting to do all the work on reducing or even eliminating imported oil probably ten years ago...
To Martha #42, Technology to drive the OTTO Cycle internal combustion has been known for at least one hundred years. It is not dependant on gasoline! However the automobile industry world-wide in competition with each other are not in the business of producing IT engines that witll drive a car for a longer distance at a higher speed and gasoline is the "weapon of choice". The death of the electric car is one of the worst tragedies that has befallen us in this century and the means used against human population was criminal. But that asiide and to the above article, I join the other sceptics in treating the premise of failing consumerism to equal global warming, an accurate phrase incidentally but misused in dauily banter. The planet has seen seventeen major configurations in the lastt two million light years and will see others but they are part of an evolutionary process that is inevitable. There is no question that the Artic Ice Flow is on thin ice,(pardon the unintended pun) and that the Polar Bear is invading man made territory in search of food and there is no doubt that our heat generating mentality is responsible for much of it the good news is that man will be the next species to reach extinction when all other life demises at its present rate.
The Scotsman article made two basic points.Firstly, that the weather influences what people buy. Secondly, that weather is becoming less predictable and therefore it is becoming more difficult to predict what people will buy.Both are presumably evidence based observations that are hardly surprising. Perhaps some figures of the changes would have been helpful, but judging by the feeding frenzy that followed amongst commentators, particularly from the U.S., anything that claims that global warming might be causing problems acts like throwing a bucketful of chum into shark infested waters.Martha claims, "As for global warming, it's a lot of bosh. The earth goes through cycles that no scientists understand yet." Why not do some reading on the subject Martha, rather than make these idiotic comments? You will find that a great deal is known about the ice ages and the changes in the Earth's orbit that caused them, but that such cycles cannot explain the present changes.Martha also repeats the falsehood that,"we [ie the US] do as a nation lead the world in emissions control both in automobiles and factory chimneys" Well actually Martha the US only "leads" the world in being the greatest polluter in terms of emissions of carbon dioxide, which is the most important of the greenhouse gases.According to the US Dept. of Energy CO2 Information Analysis Centre, the US has the highest per capita emission of CO2 of any large country in the world (exceeded by only a handful of tiny rich Gulf or Caribbean states and Luxembourg).The representative figures for 2003 are (in tons CO2 per person):
USA 19.8 tons CO2 per person per yearAustralia 18.0Canada 17.9Russia 10.3Germany 9.8Japan 9.7United Kingdom 9.4Spain 7.3France 6.2Sweden 5.9Iran 5.6Mexico 4.0China 3.2Cuba 2.3Egypt 2.0Brazil 1.6Indonesia 1.4India 1.19
Well #71 Slioch, Scottish Highlands in your reply to Martha and the US In a conversation in a London Pub last year, I found it interesting that the young Lady with whom we were talking to mentioned that she could not imagine driving anywhere more that 3 hours. It is not unusual for many American to drive that distance many times during the year and most of the commerce does travel about the country by truck. That is likely influenced because of a just in time material philosophy and therefore this frees capital to invest toward improving production. And as the world becomes more urban as well as the US citizens may not travel as much but not the movement of its goods streams in US. The urbanites are dealing with what the agrarian society has managed for years. Growing up in a rural community I was introduced early to the most scientific methods available for determining when to plant and the method was the almanac. All calendars had the signs but the most often used date and one not ignored was the last frost date. Rarely was this one tested. My point is that this is nothing new. I have seen droughts, rains but always the farmer was deliberating and now the merchants are having problems handling what the farmers could. Now I may be too liberally interpreting your post to about the Yanks to suggest that perhaps you believe that the US is #1 among some other things you have not mentioned. But do the math. It is 2,777 miles from New York City, New York on the east coast to Los Angeles California on the West Coast. If one averaged 55 miles per in would take 50 hours of driving time. With the increased distances, it follows that a 1.8 increase in the Co2 may be necessary to move the goods because of the huge distances but these may in fact be eliminated by the huge amount of countryside with abundance of vegetation, which may finally leave the US with a smaller footprint than you are willing to admit. More in the next post
Well #71 Slioch, Scottish Highlands in your reply to Martha and the USAnd your statement “Why not do some reading on the subject Martha, rather than make these idiotic comments? You will find that a great deal is known about the ice ages and the changes in the Earth's orbit that caused them, but that such cycles cannot explain the present changes.” Why do we not see these ice ages discussed and why is only the massive Global Warming the only posibility. The US has the 5 largest freshwater inland lakes in the world that were created by Glaciers and at that time the ocean was 400 feet lower than today. Mars is warming and the Sun is the heat source in the sky and is never considered a part of the heat process. I did not discover this climate issue recently and have followed it for years. I well remember when the world was predicted to be going into an ice age. And the hockey stick graph so often used to define and support the increase in temperatures began at the end of the little ice age ignoring that time when agriculture by your own Scottish history supported agriculture in those Scottish Mountains and I submit deliberately not showing the huge decrease in temperature graph at the beginning of the ice age because the Greens are defending flimsy scientific evidence.
Please anyone, I have just finished a scientific study and need grant or subsidy to study global warming. I don't want to work, I much prefer watching ice melt from my subsidized boat. My most recent scientific study irrefutably proved that the constant firing of rockets from Cape Canaveral has caused a shift in Earth's orbit. Yes, we have pushed the earth closer to the sun, the red shift in my spectral analysis proves this. Either we stop rocket launches, or we do simultaneous launches with China so as to ofset each others rocket thrusts. The timing needs to be exact. We will have protest demonstrations at Cape Canaveral soon. Oh crap, my wife wants me to do the dishes. Please I need grant money - I hate being home to do the chores.
Professor Clem Asspucker BS, MS, PHD
Rubish, Rubish, Rubish, im a scot who now lives in florida if extremes of weather are affecting sales try living here with hurricanes tornados and 100 degrees in the hight of summer lots of tropical rain and 8 below zero only 2 weeks ago in north east florida global warming and climate change does not affect sales in shops bars resturaunts or anywhere else,just a poor excuse for bad management and choices of the shops back home in scotland not to mention the high prices.
I'm sure the investors like hearing management explain why profits weren't higher...."the weather was the problem".... They sure don't want to blame it on poor management (which it undoubtedly was), so the weather makes a convenient excuse. I predict this management will either not stay in business or hold their jobs much longer.
Here's my take on the global warming debate. I think the issues have boiled down to 1) is man significantly affecting climate change, and 2) can man do anything significant about it, short of wrecking our economies, in any case?
There are good logical arguments for and against. The fact is no matter how logical the arguments, they are only theories until they can be proven. Neither side can "prove" their theories are correct at this time. I will say, however, I believe the burden of proof lies with the pro-global warming crowd since they brought it up in the first place. I am confident if the pro-global warming advocates could prove their theory correct, none but the insane would not be willing to do whatever we can to avoid such an apocalyptic event.
In the meantime, I don't want to give our govenments the power to tax and regulate us and our businesses out of business in the name of good intentions. I am willing to take prudent voluntary measures to make my meager contributions in this effort, but that is all until their theory can be proven.....which I doubt it can.
Maybe the UK is going to be the new "downunder"!!!
Businesses that are in trouble are a bit like football managers at the bottom of the league - they are likely to grab hold of the most unlikely excuses for their poor performance. Blacks Leisure shares were penny shares 20 years ago (ie worthless) so now it has come full circle. It is baffling why Blacks are struggling - because there has been an explosion in the outdoor market in the last 10 -15 years. Bad management is the real reason.
As for this report - I assume people don't go to the shops in just about every other country in the Western World (since just about every other country in the Western World has better weather than Scotland)?
This report in 2 words - TOTAL RUBBISH
I'm just waiting on the Blair spin machine to come up with this as the reason people aren't voting for Labour.
ricstick2000, Florida,
Your command of the English language is as poor as your observations on this topic.
#72 Well Cliff, at least you seem to accept that the US has the highest per capita CO2 production in the world, which is more than Martha has managed to admit thus far. As to the reasons, you give one or two: but is it significant that you emphasise something (large distances) that cannot be laid at the feet of humans, whilst ignoring the profligate US lifestyle that can?Even Bush has admitted that the US is addicted to oil. Addicts react in various ways to being confronted with their problem. Some deny there is any problem in their behaviour – it seems to me that is what Martha is doing. Others admit there is a problem but make out its not their fault – it seems to me that is what you are doing.I’m interested that you mention the New York to Los Angeles distance. I’ve done that journey both ways, by rail (Amtrak), (plus a bit of Greyhound buses having jumped out at Green River, Utah and wandered around in the Sierras en route.) That journey did rather illustrate (besides the wonders of the journey itself) the poverty of rail transport in the US – the engine caught fire (!) outside Denver heading west, and we were half a day late getting into N.Y. on the return. I remember on the return journey, in 2000 just after the Concord flight in Paris, I walked through the entire train, six coaches completely full, as we pulled out of Kansas City about 9am. I wanted to see if anyone was reading a newspaper. The result: not a single person in the entire train, in that morning on a newsworthy day, was reading a newspaper.It rather summed up to me the impression I had gained of the people I had met and talked to in my two months in the west. I knew it was unfair to distil complex matters into a few words, but I did it nonetheless, and concluded that if I was restricted to three adjectives to describe the folk I met in the US, they would be: ‘friendly’, ‘generous’ and ‘ignorant’. And therein, I think, lies the source of the problems facing the US, and why you
The power plants (sans Nuclear)are still using 19th Century methods i.e. COAL...that along with oil have raised the overall temp whereby average surface temperature on Earth is 15'C...replacement for fossil fuel is still the key...and remember the side-effect of global warming can and is extreme cold...just a thought on this thread...and of course lads let us not forget the period from 800-1300 AD in Europa the "Medieval Climate Optimum" resulting in huge population growth because of the extended growing season...of course followed by a "mini-Ice Age" and Plague wiping out 25% percent of the popuation in Europa...the point Climate change has many factors "known" and "unknown" BUT ice melts @ the Poles does cause rising sea levels...and more extreme weather i.e. hurricanes, tsunamiand out of season weather...its relationship to sales on High Street is actually a rather unknown factor...LOL...especially in regards to strap-less evening wear, etc...
That should have been “Concord crash in Paris” in #80 above.
#73 Cliff, to address some of your points:
? “Why do we not see these ice ages discussed” They are! Endlessly! Look up “Vostok” or “Dome C” or British Antarctic Survey”. Or look up “Carbon dioxide and temperature records” or “Concentrations of CO2 in atmosphere” in Wikipedia. You may not trust Wiki, but the first ref. is a graph straight from ice core data, and the second seems OK to me after a quick scan, though it’s got it’s units in a twist.? “Sun is the heat source in the sky and is never considered a part of the heat process” Nonsense! Read the IPCC AR4 report – or any other reliable and coherent account of global warming. Of course the sun is taken into account, how could it not be?? “hockey stick graph … began at the end of the little ice age” Not true! The “hockey stick” graph goes back to AD1000 and appeared in IPCC 2001 TAR. It was largely exonerated by your own American National Academy of Science National Research Council. Their 155 page report was published in June 2006. The associated press release states,“There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, boreholes, retreating glaciers, and other "proxies" of past surface temperatures to say with a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new report from the National Research Council. Less confidence can be placed in proxy-based reconstructions of surface temperatures for A.D. 900 to 1600, said the committee that wrote the report, although the available proxy evidence does indicate that many locations were warmer during the past 25 years than during any other 25-year period since 900.”“The Research Council committee found the Mann team's conclusion [ie hockey stick graph] that warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last thousand years to be plausible
#82 Slioch - Americans are cautious about adopting the global warming theory because we understand to do so can wreck havoc on our economy (Kyoto agreement demonstrated that to many of us). When you can either 1) prove the global warming theory is correct, or 2) show us how we can make more money with it than we can without it, then you'll see Americans come over to that way of thinking. Calling us ignorant because we are cautious is not winning us to the cause.....
While Europeans may see Americans as ignorant, Americans see Western Europeans (with the French as the epicenter) as arrogant socialist who constantly criticize the US when the US doesn't follow their lead, whatever that may be. (Much like a “parent-child” relationship.) If you think you've got a good idea go make it happen. Show us the wisdom of your ideas and deeds. Quit criticizing the US for not blindly giving you the "muscle" you need to implement your ideas. America is doing pretty well in most aspects following our own instincts and values, many of which came from our Western European ancestors (thank you very much). In some ways, I think America today may be more like Scotland during the period of enlightenment than Scotland is.......I would love to see Scotland get back to those values, and become more like Americans than the French.....
Thanks for your thoughts.
Slioch, Scottish Highlands
I am more disappointed than pissed but as I have over the years my sense to recognize the basis of a situation and in this particular case your real inclination and the real Global Warming motives are revealed. It is those ignorant Americans again and we currently have occupied countries all over the world to prove our ignorance of your processes. http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries/cemeteries.php So if we remain skeptical of the World policies (political solutions) and in the ignorant American way apply a bologna detection process your past and current proclivities have incited us to be so inclined...
From Carl Sagans book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The kit is a handyman's tool set for skeptical thinking, and includes instructions for recognizing fallacious or fraudulent arguments. Among the instructions:
Bologony detection kit process
wherever possible obtain independent confirmation of the facts !!!! YOU DON'T!
encourage substantive debate on the subject by knowledgeable persons !!!! YOU DON'T! If not your premies and as in this discussion this American and all those other ignorant Americans are the problems.... spin more than one hypothesis!! YOU DON'T ensure that every link in a chain of argument works, not just most of them !!!! YOU DON'T! Links follow with some excerpts from some of these sources The deniers I have written about are not just credible; they have reached the pinnacle of the scientific establishment, with credentials to rival those of any of scientists representing the IPCC position. http://www.urban-renaissance.org/urbanren/index.cfm?DSP=c... Hockey-Stick discussions Report Unsuitable
http://www.mountain-images.co.uk/mountain-photographs-pri...
http://www.his.com/~sepp/Archive/NewSEPP/Climate%20models...
One of the disadvantages a skeptic has to cope with is the problem of finding adequate research support.
A Skeptical View of Climate ModelsBy Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute,
Here in the Netherlands, many people have ranked me as a climate skeptic. It did not help much that I called myself a protestant recently. I protest against overwhelming pressure to adhere to the climate change dogma promoted by the adherents of IPCC. I was brought up in a fundamentalist protestant environment, and have become very sensitive to everything that smells like an orthodox belief system. The advantages of accepting a dogma or paradigm are only too clear. One no longer has to query the foundations of one's convictions, one enjoys the many advantages of belonging to a group that enjoys political power, one can participate in the benefits that the group provides, and one can delegate questions of responsibility and accountability to the leadership. In brief, the moment one accepts a dogma, one stops being an independent scientist.
A skeptic, on the other hand, accepts both the burdens and the pleasures of standing on his own feet. One of the disadvantages a skeptic has to cope with is the problem of finding adequate research support. The other side of that coin is that an independent scientist has a great opportunity to think better and delve deeper than most of his or her colleagues. Let me take an example in which I have been involved for thirty years, the problem of a finite prediction horizon for complex deterministic systems. This, the very problem first defined by Edward Lorenz, still is not properly accounted for by the majority of climate scientists. In a meeting at ECMWF in 1986, I gave a speech entitled "No F
The Paradigm discussed in A Skeptical View of Climate ModelsBy Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute,
A few years after launching my slogan on forecast skill I chanced upon a copy of Karl Popper's "Open Universe" and discovered that Popper had anticipated the problems caused by the Lorenz paradigm.
Lorenz paradigm. link follows
http://www.es.ucl.ac.uk/people/hunt/maths-paper.html
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/01/31/a-personal-call...
Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, former Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes contributes another guest weblog today to Climate Science (see his first weblog on January 6, 2006). He has the professional qualifications and experience in climate science to comment on this issue. His guest weblog is given below
Seventeen years ago, I wrote a column for Weather magazine, expressing my concerns about the lack of honesty, integrity and humility of many climate scientists. “I worry about the arrogance of scientists who claim they can help solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding”, reads one line from my text. Unknown to me, my friend Richard Lindzen was working on his famous paper “Some Cooling Concerning Global Warming”, which appeared in the Bulletin of the AMS at the same time. This was early 1990. It is 2007 now, and I want to ring the alarm bell again. There is a difference, though: then I was worried, now I am angry. I am angry about the Climate Doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in. I am angry at Al Gore, I am angry at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for resetting its Doomsday clock, I am angry at Lord Martin Rees for using the full weight of the Royal Society in support of the Doomsday hype, I am angry at Paul Crutzen for his speculations about yet another technological fix, I am angry at the staff of IPCC fo
wherever possible obtain independent confirmation of the facts !!!! YOU DON'T! Bologony detection kit process
1. wherever possible obtain independent confirmation of the facts 2. encourage substantive debate on the subject by knowledgeable persons 3. spin more than one hypothesis4. ensure that every link in a chain of argument works, not just most of them
An excerp from 88 above .. This is a long article It has become so easy to run General Circulation Models on supercomputers that most atmospheric scientists shy away from matters like a thorough study of the interaction between the Polar Vortex and the Arctic Oscillation. Mike Wallace mailed me a year ago, saying that there is not a beginning of consensus on a theory of the Arctic Oscillation. This was one of the highlights in an advanced senior-citizens’ class on climate change I taught a year ago. It was announced as “A Storm in the Greenhouse”, referring primarily to the increasingly bitter debates of the past fifteen years.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/01/31/correction-to-s...
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/02/01/the-difference-...
Per your comment #80 I knew it was unfair to distil complex matters into a few words, but I did it nonetheless, and concluded that if I was restricted to three adjectives to describe the folk I met in the US, they would be: ‘friendly’, ‘generous’ and ‘ignorant’.
Likewise I find it as difficult to provide an intellectual discussion of my understanding of such trivial subjects as simple algorithms per my engineering degree but if you were so inclined to recogonize and compliment my intelect in your post I would immediately become the skeptic and engage in the Bologony detection process .
Sloppy representations of boundary conditions, clouds, convection, evaporation and condensation do not mess weather forecasts up all that fast. But the long-term evolution of the general circulation is to a large extent determined by boundary conditions. This realization struck me with some force when I discovered last year that a simple algorithm for inversion rise above the daytime boundary layer I conceived in 1973 is still in wide use today.And laterThey were not exposed to Lorenz’ WMO monograph on the General Circulation, their faces turn blank when the terms Available Potential Energy and Eddy Kinetic Energy are used. Since they are offered no alternatives, they join those who claim that they need higher resolution and bigger computers. The job of having to think on one’s own feet is too hard to contemplate.And still laterThen came the rub. Thin vortex filaments can be simulated on a supercomputer only if the horizontal resolution is much improved. With the current mesh size of the ECMWF model at 40 kilometers if I am not mistaken, simulation of the vorticity microstructure in the troposphere would require a 10,000-fold increase in com
I immediately became the skeptic when there were only 6 climatologist among the original so called scientist and signers of the original Koyoto treaty and it got no better when allegation were made that many of the so called scientist were in fact social scientist.
A Personal Call For Modesty, Integrity, and Balance by Hendrik Tennekes
“Scientists can no longer afford to be naïve about the political effects of publicly stated scientific opinions. If the effect of their scientific views is politically potent, they have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions, and to try to be honest with themselves, their colleagues and their audience about the degree to which their assumptions have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence”.
Public Comment on CCSP Report "Temperature in the Lower Atmosphere:Steps for Understanding and Reconcling DirrerencesRoger A. Pielke Sr ProfessorColorado State University
http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/pdf/NR-143.pdf
Our midwest could sure use some of your warming. Do you folks read the papers? Do you study history?I just wonder what caused the ice ages we have had thousands of years ago. I wonder what caused the warming trends then. Do you think the cavemen had too many cars or burned too much coal?
Hi Clif
I think it's only courteous for me to say thanks for all the above, whilst I'm sure you will understand that it would take a long time to read through all the references and try to follow what you are saying. But I will try to do so over the next few days.I have in the last several months followed up many of the popular articles and papers suggested by climate sceptics as debunking anthropogenic climate change, and without exception have found them using spurious arguments and misrepresentation of the AGW case, so I remain sceptical of the sceptics! However, I would certainly struggle to follow critiques of algorithms and chaos theory! (I once corresponded with the daughter of a close friend of Ed Lorentz - so I know when I'm getting out of my depth!). But thanks for the effort nonetheless.
#83 GFE said, "When you can either 1) prove the global warming theory is correct, or 2) show us how we can make more money with it than we can without it, then you'll see Americans come over to that way of thinking."
The trouble is, something like climate science cannot be proved in the way that geometry can be proved. Instead (if AGW is correct) we will move to an increasingly overwhelming case, and in many scientists' judgement we are there already. As for making money out of it - frankly, the Earth's climate doesn't give a damn about whether we can profit from its changes. That, it seems to me, is the deep realisation we have to face up to: we have become used to thinking of the climate as something reasonably stable, reliable and even benign (OK with some exceptions), because that is more or less how it has behaved since the last ice age ended some 11,000 years ago. That is what appears to be changing. So I think Wally Broecker's comment is more appropriate: "The climate is a wild beast, and we are poking it with sticks."
#94 JH Ross said, "I just wonder what caused the ice ages we have had thousands of years ago."
They are thought to have been caused by changes in the Earth's orbit slightly reducing or increasing the amount of energy from the sun reaching the Earth. Once cooling (at the beginning of an ice age) or warming (at the beginning of an interglacial) was initiated, feedbacks particularly involving CO2 kicked and amplified the change. It is those feedbacks that prompted the Wally Broecker quote in #95 above - that is what makes climate change potentially dangerous.
I have had the good fortune to have seen a lot of this world and met a lot of its people and I have learned much from my discussions and associations. My horizons are enormously expanded by these opportunities. I have also had the good fortune to have seen much of this world through the eyes of a helicopter pilot. My view is that I see more of the world in a 2 hour flight than most see in a life time. I have seen this very close and personal, observed how mankind has developed the world to his pleasure and I have seen the evidence of man’s atrocities that are beyond my comprehension. I know those experiences will forever influence my thought processes. I could easily conclude that it would be required that one have this type of world perspective and education to insure correct policies and attitudes if it were not for my favorite poet Emily Dickinson who a lived an introverted and hermetic life. One of her many poems
A WORD is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.
Those atrocities I saw occurred because that process did not permit that word said and I submit to you lacking that word said in scientific discussion can contribute to similar catastrophic occurrences. Discussion, discussion, discussion.
Clif, US #73 and earlier - I extend to you an invitation to my wee house in Islay. We'll do a distillery a day, and the receptors in your tongue will thank you for a long time to come. You can stop at the peat bogs, or just ask any distiller how it's done - but they do it so well on the "Jewel of the Hebrides". Slainte!I'm serious. You want my e-mail address, let me know. Ileach
"56. Martha, Florida / 7:53pm 3 Mar 2007Global warming a fact? Sorry, but only according to the lunatic fringe is it a fact. There are serious scientific objections to the entire notion of global warming, and a consensus about it does NOT exist anywhere in the scientific community."I presume you find it beneath your dignity to actualy provide some PROOF?
Why should we believe what YOU say? Where is YOUR research work? Your references? Your notes?
Seems strange that some one who puts so much store in science can not be arsed to back up their spurious claioms.
Typical arrogant hick American.
