So are there any picture of, or plans to raise the Duddon Estury Botha?

Steve

The bottom line is this; as has already been pointed out as new sources become available then it is absoloutely right and proper that historians look again at recieved ‘historical’ wisdom and revise it where necessary – unfortunately this may indeed be painful for some individuals, but is essential for the sake of both justice and future generations.

If such revisions are done with proper accademic rigour than they will stand the test of time, and our understanding of events will improve. If not then other accademics will demolish the arguments and such revisions will fade and eventually be forgotten.

The key thing to always remember is that there are always multiple ways to interpret events – an excellent example would be the capital case of Derek Bently(?) and the instruction he alegedly gave his accomplice before he shoy the police office ie ‘Give it to him!’ did he mean shoot him or give him the firearm?

Untangling such ambiguities are the art of the historian.

The other thing is that our world views vary from person to person, from pacifist to Nazi. To say history happened like this and should never be revised is the approach of the totallaliatrian; the very thing many bomber crews died fighting against. You might not like what Irving says, but denying him the right to make a fool of himself in public would be to indulge in the very sort of extreme right wing politics that he so clearly aproves of. So could denying him the right to peddle his assinine and repugnant ideas be interpreted as a victory for his extreme politics he desires.

Steve

Firstly SOC you are showing a fundemental lack of understanding of the processes we are talking about, both specific to green house gasses and more generally the scientific prosess.

Greenhouse gases trap heat, heat is of course a specific type of energy. Energy can do work, ie. melting glaciers, creating higher wind speeds, evaporating more water from the oceans etc. Therefore it is not just a question of how much heat is in the system (ie how hot the world is), but of how much energy of all forms, there is and the type of work it is doing (ie. latent heat of melting/evaporation, or driving weather systems such as hurricanes).

However on top of green house gases there are other factors effecting the heating of the world, such as high altitude dust and gases which can shield the earth from much warming effectof the sun; a good example of this are volcanic erruptions where sulphur dioxide has a dimmming effect and the dust has been known to cause ‘mini ice ages.’ So to look at figures and say we have had a minor cooling trend in the 60s so green house gasses are not responsible for global warming without examining total atmospheric activity and composition is deeply flawed.

This underlines a BASIC scientific principle: when one finds an anomally in a model, one looks for its cause and then refines ones model accodingly. A good example of this is the relationship between relativity and Newtonian physics. If you wish to understand how scientific process works I suggest you get a good book on the works of Carl Popper.

Anyway as Phixer rightly points out the trend was miniscule in comparrison to the warming trend we are currently seeing as the attached chart illustrates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

It is also apparant that you are not someone who regularly handles/generates statistics; if you did you would realise there are always odd anomalies such as 1934. Also we are talking about GLOBAL not US warming, and as the attached chart shows global temprature are higher tha.n in the 1930s……

Once again the peer reviewed evidence is overwhelming, and in picking at small anomalies and taking them to disprove climate change you are illlustrating your lack of scientific understanding. Wake up and smell the coffee………….

Steve

People often refer to the ‘experts’ who foretold a new ice ge in the 70s; in actual fact when trawlling for these doom and gloom stories one only finds odd cranks who managed to get a lot of publicity for their ideas at the time; a bit like Eric Von Daniken and his ideas about the Nasca lines being a space port etc.

Certainly there were not hundreds of peer reviewed papers on the subject and nothing along the lines of the IPCC report. So don’t let 1970s pseudo science distract you from the overwhelming scientific evidence that is available on the subject of climate change.

Mr Boyle is quite right when he talks about the Earth only having the ability to support a finite number of humans, that is becuse it only has finite resources and for Western civilisation the most important currently are fossil fuels.

However there are two problems with coal, oil and gas;

1. As already stated the supply is finite, many experts are now of the opinion that oil production has or is close to peaking, our own North Sea gas supplies are in decline and the UK is now a net importer of energy. With declining supply and ever increasing demand, from developing countries, we will see ever soaring energy price (witness the rise over the last two years from roughy $20 a barrel to be consistantly over $70). As our entire ecconomy is bassed upon these sources how will this effect the prices of everything from clothes to food, and from air travel to employers costs? the only certainty is that they will rise sharply.

2. The environmental damage; we are already seeing globally poor harvests and food prices rising on the world’s commodity markets. The UN has laid the blame for the Darfur crisis firmly at the door of climate change, recognising that the Arab nomads are being displaced from there increasingly arid lands and seeking new pastures. Conflicts like this can only increase in the future. Possibly with huge tides of refugees heading towards places such as Europe, this will of course cost us large sums either in closing our borders, accomodating refugees, famine relief or certainly through disruption to trade. (NB. India is currently building a wall around Bangladesh to keep the expect tide of eco-refugees out).

However you look at it the two factors above will put increasing strains upon our ecconomy – directly and adversely effecting every man, woman and child in this country. Either could severely damage our ecconomy and society, together the damage could be catastrophic; especially if we sit back and take no action, and the longer we wait the more radical/darker green the solution will have to be.

Understandably no one wants to believe this; but we must believe what we have reason to believe not what we want to believe. It was believing what the evidence showed him about Hitler’s Germany that set Churchill apart from other politicians and the bulk of the population of his day. And like the 1930s we are approaching a crisis that will set the tone of the 21st century in the same way that WW2 set the tone of the 20th.

Steve

The reason they are focused upon aviation at the moment is because of its rapid growth rate, which threatens to cancel out hard won reductions in carbon emmisions made elsewhere, a fact acknowledged by the UK parliment/government. If you had been following the debate in the media then you would have already have been aware of what they were saying – which tends to support what I said in post #36.

As the aim has to be to massively reduce the emissions of green house gases, that means reductions from all sources including aviation. Which is NOT some kind of special case as some in the industry seem to suggest. And with 6.8 billion humans now on the planet, if any industry should be considered special it would have to be agriculture. You can live without a holiday or that business trip, or even dare I say it an air display, but you can’t live without food. And that is what climate change is about for hundreds of millions of people – SURVIVAL.

Steve

Actually, looking at the ‘greenies’ I know, none of them are narrow minded or blinkered, in fact they are very well informed and present rational arguments supported by evidence. Where as those who seek to pooh pooh, their stance never provide evidence apart from vague statements such as ‘ Well we all know that actually volcanoes produce more CO2 than man,’ which is just not true (just look on the USGS website), or there is no scietific consenus which also is not true – have alook at the watered down IPCC report.

In fact I would say it is the business as usual, no problem, it’s all hype brigade who are narrow minded and in a deep state of denial. They should try reading the science news on the BBC website, or the environmental news in papers such as the Independent, Gaurdian or Financial Times.

But then whose got the biggest breasts on big brother is far more important isn’t it? And preserving the last Supermarine Anorak MK6a that serverd with 16sqn is more important, than would have been saving the sadly now extinct Yangtze dolphin.

Steve.

Quite frankly the ignorance, and denial, shown about climate change by the posters on this thread is staggering…………….

Firstly everything said by Phixer in post 29 is quite correct, the great majority of scientists are in agreement about climate change and disenters generally believe that the IPCC report is grossly optimistic. Virtually all peer reviewed scientific papers concluding that climate change is both real and largely caused by human activity.

Secondly please note that in post #25 FMK.6JOHN’s chart of DEFRA figures shows aviation contributing 7% to UK carbon emissions NOT the 2% widely bandied around which is actually the global emmisions figure. A figure that is set to rise dramatically, perhaps exponentially, in coming years. If you are concerned about spin, then you should recognise that BAA are here indulging in the same sort of spin that climate campaigners are regularly accused of.

Thirdly with regards the protesters. I am only aquainted with two of them personally – one is a retired grandmother and the other has taken a week of her annual leave to attend; niether of whom are unique. Both are fine honest people who have the guts to stand by their convictions. I phoned the retired lady last night and asked about the other protesters; she told me ‘we have a lot of university students and science teachers here.’ Apparently the protest was timed to coincide with the university and school holidays. She also stated that whilst there are unemployed people (who incidently have just as much right to protest as anyone else) they also have a fair number of people who are just coming for the day to make up numbers, as well as self employed people and local residents. And yes despite being an aviation enthusiast and widely travelled I have a lot of sympathy with this last group – I certainly wouldn’t want jets over my house every few second.

Finally as Bex rightly points out being unemployed does not make anyone ‘scrounging scum’ or lazy as is often implied both here and in the media – most are ordinary people who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. As I am sure many on here have experienced, and no doubt many more will experience in the years to come.

Steve.