I am sure there are many fruitcakes who will see this as so good that they would have a celebratory dinner with Chlorinated Chicken as the main course.
If you want a higher sterling exchange rate then:
a) Create more wealth b) Live within your means c) Increase your savings ratio
As the UK has had a current account deficit of £250bn over the last three years the downward pressure on sterling will continue.
The party is a very different one to the one that was in coalition in 2010. Half the MPs are different, and 75% of the members are different. The issues are very different. There is some institutional memory but we should not expect this to dominate. It is a very different party, as indeed are all the Westminster parties to a lesser extent.
Indeed, your Foxness. The party I joined in 1980 died with the Coalition. It's a new party in a lot of senses but there's a lot of enthusiastic individuals in there so I'm optimistic.
On the wider question, we obviously don't know what's going to happen. Will we see the strong Conservative performances in the north of England and the midlands replicated next time ? Don't know.
If there is a strong tide running against a party, there's nowhere to hide as all parties will know from experience. There were some huge swings in June - some of the largest since 1997 and the kind you see only rarely (if at all) in most elections where swings ins eats are generally near to UNS.
Britons will lose their right to sue the government for breaking the law under Brexit plans that could allow ministers to escape censure over air pollution.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
The Tories should be encouraged that 8 Labour seats they need to target have a majority of less than 1%, enough for an overall majority. While having 10 reasonably safe Tory seats in Scotland, especially in rural areas, will also boost them
And Labour should be equally encouraged about how many small majorities a lot of the Tories have ( including cabinet members)
Science is based on scepticism. It's only recently that we've discovered that we know nothing about 95% of what the universe is made of. It is never settled.
The world may be warming, carbon dioxide concentrations may be none of it, some of it, or even all of it. From the phlogiston theory onwards, science is always only the best guess at the time.
Prevailing theories are put up to be shot at.
Right, that's enough platitudes, but the fact remains we always have to be aware that not only could we be wrong, we often are.
No one is arguing that science is ever completely settled, but that does not mean ignoring the evidence that best fits because it is not a perfect fit.
Science builds theories that approximate to measurable reality, then refines these to better approximations, repeated endlessly. Newtons theories were not discarded or denied, they were improved upon. That is not what AGW sceptics are attempting. They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world.
Newtons theories were not discarded or denied, they were improved upon. That is not what AGW sceptics are attempting.
You have utterly utterly missed the point and got it completely backwards.
Newton's theories were wrong and they weren't challenged or questioned for too long because they were adopted too readily and too widely. To question the ideas of the Great Man was heresy.
Mr. L, science is a great method, its only weak spot is it requires scientists to advance.
For 200 years after Newton's death, his mistaken views of light went almost unchallenged because anyone who dared implicitly criticise the great man by suggesting he might have been wrong had their head blown off (metaphorically) for their heresy.
We need scepticism in science, because otherwise flawed theories aren't improved and false theories aren't proven wrong.
The MMR vaccine was quite different as, if memory serves, it was one buffoon conducting experiments in an unscientific way and then using his flawed conclusions to frighten the public and ill-informed media who regurgitated his idiocy.
I'm deeply suspicious of those who want to silence critics of a given theory by saying "That's wrongthink, you cannot believe or express that view" rather than simply explaining why they believe it's wrong.
A 299 page report on climate change in 2016 with 30 pages of references is downloadable here:
The correlation between right wing politics and climate change scepticism is not one based on science, it is because action on climate change requires 2 things that are anathema to right wingers: Co-operation via international organisations, and changes to the economy that they see as anti business.
That goes impressively off piste not once, but twice. You don't do science by counting pages and footnotes, nor by imputing motive to your opponents instead of addressing their arguments. I understand you are a doctor, in which case it is a bit disturbing that you need telling that. Here is a 400 word treatise with 50 pages of footnotes saying that homeopathy works, and anyone saying different is in the pay of Big Pharma.
It is a very well substantiated and evidence based piece of work. It is substantial, but it is the quality of evidence that is striking, and consistent. There are none so blind as the wilfully blind though.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
The Conservatives should never have lost those seats to Labour.
There's never any great secret about election results: it's an accumulation of little things
- Corbyn wasn't tested by the media because he couldn't win - Most of the polling was well off leading to poor targeting by the Tories - May thought she was further ahead than she was so she could take some big risks on policy - Labour was disciplined and on message - May wanted to win it on her own so didn't use her team effectively - Corbyn sucked up airtime and votes from the Greens and the fragmented left - Brexit undermined enthusiasm for the Tories in many seats
Which partly, although not fairly, explains why a fair few leading Tories are angry with the polling industry.
The polling industry measured Conservative support very accurately. It also got the Labour surge correct, up till the start of June. What it got wrong was it showed Labour support plateauing in the final week.
True were using.
The problem is that relying on the core numbers would have significantly overstated Labour in the previous 5 elections. This was the first election for ages where that was not so.
As I said, they did it for good reasons.
Nate Silver was critical though. He thinks you should always trust your data and if it gives you the wrong result, not much you can do. The crime, he reckons, is to import an assumption (however reasonable) to distort your data.
Btw, Nate did state on election-eve that a Hung Parliament was perfectly possible given the total range of polling evidence. It wasn't the most likely result, but it was certainly plausible.
Which is what the overall majority markets were showing on election eve - that a hung parliament was possible but not likely.
Many of the individual constituency markets were way out though and very profitable they were.
Tell me about it. A lady friend asked me to stick 50 quid on a hung parliament for her. It was 10/1. I told her not to waste her money.
Naturally I did the honorable thing after the event.
Science is based on scepticism. It's only recently that we've discovered that we know nothing about 95% of what the universe is made of. It is never settled.
The world may be warming, carbon dioxide concentrations may be none of it, some of it, or even all of it. From the phlogiston theory onwards, science is always only the best guess at the time.
Prevailing theories are put up to be shot at.
Right, that's enough platitudes, but the fact remains we always have to be aware that not only could we be wrong, we often are.
No one is arguing that science is ever completely settled, but that does not mean ignoring the evidence that best fits because it is not a perfect fit.
Science builds theories that approximate to measurable reality, then refines these to better approximations, repeated endlessly. Newtons theories were not discarded or denied, they were improved upon. That is not what AGW sceptics are attempting. They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world.
Newtons theories were not discarded or denied, they were improved upon. That is not what AGW sceptics are attempting.
You have utterly utterly missed the point and got it completely backwards.
Newton's theories were wrong and they weren't challenged or questioned for too long because they were adopted too readily and too widely. To question the ideas of the Great Man was heresy.
Anthropogenic global warming is a theory. Remove the adjective and you could have empirical observation, though that is what is disputed, and indeed should be by scientists.
What do we think the level needed is for a Corbyn minority government? Any chance Vince would support such an endeavour if Labour were on say 300 seats or so?
Wrong question to ask. Cable would in practice undoubtedly be willing to support a Lab minority govt, and I'd be much happier if the reasonably sane Liberal Democrats were mitigating Corbyn's lunacy.
The question is whether they would have the numbers to make it feasible. Any deal involving more than two parties would be a nightmare to manage. More than 3 and it would be hopeless.
So he needs to have the numbers for a majority at least in England on those terms, and ensure the abstention of the SNP on England only matters and at least their tacit support elsewhere, before we can talk about a deal with the Liberal Democrats.
I agree that a deal with 3+ parties would be very challenging.
I'm slightly surprised you think Vince would do a deal so readily - he seems very critical of Corbyn to me... but it may be that the arithmetic means it has to be so.
I'd also be fine with some kind of a Lib/Lab agreement/government. Presumably the Lib Dems could be persuaded to accept reducing tuition fees! Wealth taxes would also likely find some common agreement.
The LDs learned a lot during the coalition about the mechanics of such an arrangement and even though they've only got a dozen seats would strike a very hard bargain which LAB find difficult to accept. Remember Vince got stitched up by Osborne on tuition fees and will be very wary about any deal with LAB who would just expect the yellows to fall in line.
The party is a very different one to the one that was in coalition in 2010. Half the MPs are different, and 75% of the members are different. The issues are very different. There is some institutional memory but we should not expect this to dominate. It is a very different party, as indeed are all the Westminster parties to a lesser extent.
Indeed, your Foxness. The party I joined in 1980 died with the Coalition. It's a new party in a lot of senses but there's a lot of enthusiastic individuals in there so I'm optimistic.
On the wider question, we obviously don't know what's going to happen. Will we see the strong Conservative performances in the north of England and the midlands replicated next time ? Don't know.
If there is a strong tide running against a party, there's nowhere to hide as all parties will know from experience. There were some huge swings in June - some of the largest since 1997 and the kind you see only rarely (if at all) in most elections where swings ins eats are generally near to UNS.
I have voted Liberal/SDP/LD most of my life, apart from 10 years in New Labour. I joined the LDs in 2012, but have some concerns about the changes in the party. The new members seem to be Remainers rather than interested in a broader range of centrist LD policies. I may well be wrong, but conceivably they will fade away once Brexit happens.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
The recent stories coming out of Greenland; sloshy ice cap, brush fire, is really bad news.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
No, but you'll need to be patient. Give it a couple of decades ?
In the meantime, the precautionary principle seems entirely sensible to me. What is incontrovertible is the manmade large increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last few decades, and if we wait long enough for certainty and the predictions are correct, it will be to late to address the problem. In the meantime, the subsidies which have kickstarted the renewable industries look quite likely to be justified purely on economic grounds.
The passion that some denialists/sceptics/whatever you want to call them seem to have for fossil fuels utterly bemuses me.
Science is based on scepticism. It's only recently that we've discovered that we know nothing about 95% of what the universe is made of. It is never settled.
The world may be warming, carbon dioxide concentrations may be none of it, some of it, or even all of it. From the phlogiston theory onwards, science is always only the best guess at the time.
Prevailing theories are put up to be shot at.
Right, that's enough platitudes, but the fact remains we always have to be aware that not only could we be wrong, we often are.
No one is arguing that science is ever completely settled, but that does not mean ignoring the evidence that best fits because it is not a perfect fit.
Science builds theories that approximate to measurable reality, then refines these to better approximations, repeated endlessly. Newtons theories were not discarded or denied, they were improved upon. That is not what AGW sceptics are attempting. They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world.
General propositions about how things like light and matter typically behave have almost nothing in common with claims about how one contingent, chaotic and complex system will in future behave given certain hypothetical inputs. And what did right-on, uber-Warmist new labour do about warming? They bribed everybody to drive diesel cars. Well done lads, result. So it's a bit rich to be accusing other people of wanting to pollute the world. What the AGWists could have done, rather than reeling and writhing and fainting in coils at the thought of anyone daring to query their reading of the chicken's entrails, was to say: OK we will proceed on the precautionary principle, BUT to be on the safe side we will devote all our efforts to changes which are clearly beneficial *even if we are wrong* - which would imply electric cars, and solar energy. What do we get? Diesel, and two decades of preventable deaths among the young, the elderly and the ill.
The Tories should be encouraged that 8 Labour seats they need to target have a majority of less than 1%, enough for an overall majority. While having 10 reasonably safe Tory seats in Scotland, especially in rural areas, will also boost them
And Labour should be equally encouraged about how many small majorities a lot of the Tories have ( including cabinet members)
I would hardly call the Scottish seats 'safe'.
Given current polls have it almost neck and neck all to play for. Given Tory history in Scotland since 1997 those new Tory seats are now pretty safe largely due to the anti independence vote as they are mainly rural Labour are nowhere and so the Tories are the default Unionist party
Mr. L, are those datasets pre- or post-alteration (not being sarcastic, they revise temperature figures, and the vast majority of the time increase the figures)?
Also, scepticism about global warming is not the equivalent of not believing in gravity. The Earth's climate is immensely complex and within the narrow span of human history we've seen it vary massively without any industrial input at all.
The idea consensus means a theory is beyond challenge is far more unscientific because it suggests dogma rather than scepticism is the way we should look at existing theories.
I'm happy to leave science to the scientists rather than retired politicians on either side of the debate. If the scientific consensus is wrong then science will fix it. That is what happened with the MMR vaccine scare, and it is what happened with gravity.
The scientific consensus was that Thalidomide was fine. Eventually this was corrected, but only after irreversible harm had occurred.
The idea that it's not just white girls being targeted by the Muslim rape gangs seems to be disputed
"Britain's courts should treat Asian Muslim grooming gangs behind the abuse of hundreds of white teenage girls as racially aggravated criminals, leading MPs and campaigners have demanded.
The demand was issued as senior politicians and prosecutors admitted that political correctness may have stopped the gangs being properly pursued and punished after another ring of Asian mainly muslim sex offenders was convicted in Newcastle.
The Attorney General was facing calls to review the sentences of several members of the 18-strong Newcastle gang after it emerged the apparently racially-aggravated nature of their crimes was not reflected in their punishment."
I'll make that sort of prediction too. In about 20 years or so, the measured global increase will be around one degree centigrade, give or take a bit..
If it's 2 degrees, I'll still claim I was right. If t's about 0 degrees, I will claim I was near enough. That's called extrapolation.
Mr. S, if natural warm periods can occur during the reign of Henry VIII or Claudius, and natural cold periods occurred during the 18th century, why is it not possible the current climate change is also natural?
Morning Mr Dancer. The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Given we are 7 billion or so now and certainly far more than in the times of Henry VIII, let alone Claudius, small changes to the climate can profoundly affect millions of people directly and tens of millions more indirectly.
We have seen for ourselves the consequences of economic migration - if we see whole populations having to move because their regional climate has changed, that may count for little on a global basis climatically but have severe political, economic and social ramifications.
IF sea level rises, do we spend billions defending coastal cities like Shanghai, London and New York and what about those coastal cities in other areas where the country concerned may not be able to afford costly flood defences ?
Those who thought the Sun went round the Earth were adamant they were right and persecuted those who took a different view.
The idea that it's not just white girls being targeted by the Muslim rape gangs seems to be disputed
"Britain's courts should treat Asian Muslim grooming gangs behind the abuse of hundreds of white teenage girls as racially aggravated criminals, leading MPs and campaigners have demanded.
The demand was issued as senior politicians and prosecutors admitted that political correctness may have stopped the gangs being properly pursued and punished after another ring of Asian mainly muslim sex offenders was convicted in Newcastle.
The Attorney General was facing calls to review the sentences of several members of the 18-strong Newcastle gang after it emerged the apparently racially-aggravated nature of their crimes was not reflected in their punishment."
I'll make that sort of prediction too. In about 20 years or so, the measured global increase will be around one degree centigrade, give or take a bit..
If it's 2 degrees, I'll still claim I was right. If t's about 0 degrees, I will claim I was near enough. That's called extrapolation.
Two differences. Firstly, Hansen's prediction was far more specific than yours. Secondly, at the time he made it, there was little data to extrapolate from; his prediction was based on the laws of physics, not extrapolation.
Mr. Stodge, indeed, although as I wrote earlier (think it was before you arrived) I agree with many, perhaps most, of the policies proposed by those swayed by the religion of Warmor, God of Warming. What you're referring to is dealing with the affects rather than assessing the cause, and I agree, regardless of what's driving the change, that's something we need to seriously consider.
The idea that it's not just white girls being targeted by the Muslim rape gangs seems to be disputed
"Britain's courts should treat Asian Muslim grooming gangs behind the abuse of hundreds of white teenage girls as racially aggravated criminals, leading MPs and campaigners have demanded.
The demand was issued as senior politicians and prosecutors admitted that political correctness may have stopped the gangs being properly pursued and punished after another ring of Asian mainly muslim sex offenders was convicted in Newcastle.
The Attorney General was facing calls to review the sentences of several members of the 18-strong Newcastle gang after it emerged the apparently racially-aggravated nature of their crimes was not reflected in their punishment."
""Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Qari Asim, a Leeds imam, says it is for Muslims to confront “cultural prejudices” that have led these men to “prey on white girls, seeing them as easy meat”.
Trevor Philips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that the grooming gangs should not be called Asians, but Muslims.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph he said: "Labelling this phenomenon an “Asian” crime is therefore an evasion. What these men have in common is not their race or nationality. It is their proclaimed faith."
Mr. Stodge, indeed, although as I wrote earlier (think it was before you arrived) I agree with many, perhaps most, of the policies proposed by those swayed by the religion of Warmor, God of Warming. What you're referring to is dealing with the affects rather than assessing the cause, and I agree, regardless of what's driving the change, that's something we need to seriously consider.
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
GISTEMP is full of errors, as the Met Office has confirmed.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
The recent stories coming out of Greenland; sloshy ice cap, brush fire, is really bad news.
Hansen has a history of being right. More worrying is his 2013 paper in which he forecasts that the combination of heat and humidity will make most of the Earth uninhabitable by humans if we continue to burn all available fossil fuels.
The polling industry measured Conservative support very accurately. It also got the Labour surge correct, up till the start of June. What it got wrong was it showed Labour support plateauing in the final week.
True were using.
The problem is that relying on the core numbers would have significantly overstated Labour in the previous 5 elections. This was the first election for ages where that was not so.
As I said, they did it for good reasons.
Nate Silver was critical though. He thinks you should always trust your data and if it gives you the wrong result, not much you can do. The crime, he reckons, is to import an assumption (however reasonable) to distort your data.
Btw, Nate did state on election-eve that a Hung Parliament was perfectly possible given the total range of polling evidence. It wasn't the most likely result, but it was certainly plausible.
Which is what the overall majority markets were showing on election eve - that a hung parliament was possible but not likely.
Many of the individual constituency markets were way out though and very profitable they were.
Tell me about it. A lady friend asked me to stick 50 quid on a hung parliament for her. It was 10/1. I told her not to waste her money.
Naturally I did the honorable thing after the event.
This is what is odd to my mind about the general election.
You're a political aware person, interested in the political betting markets and based in London ie where the swing to Labour was highest.
Yet the result came as a surprise to you and it did to London Labour itself judging by their focus on the likes of Ealing Acton, Brentford and Tooting. For that matter the London Conservatives were campaigning in the wrong seats as well.
Whatever the polls might have been picking up before any adjustments didn't seem to match with what the politicians were experiencing on the ground.
It seems that thousands of Labour voters per constituency, maybe over ten thousand in some places, were not being picked up by the party campaigns.
I'm curious as to who these extra Labour voters are and whether they'll continue to vote.
I keep asking this and never get a reply: in the light of events since 1997, does any past or present Labour supporter now consider this characterisation of Blair to have been either inaccurate or unfair?
"Labelling this phenomenon an “Asian” crime is therefore an evasion. It also insults the largest single ethnic minority group in the UK – Hindu Indians – who consider themselves Asian, and the many East Asians who have made the UK their home. Neither group has been even remotely associated with these crimes.
What the perpetrators have in common is their proclaimed faith. They are Muslims, and many of them would claim to be practising. It is not Islamophobic to point this out, any more than it would be racist to point out that the most active persecutors of LGBT people come from countries where most people are, like me, black.
If we are going to call a spade a spade, then we should do so without embarrassment. But our elites have replaced their old fear of being called racist with a new bogey. It comes to something when the BBC prefers to risk being condemned for racism than expose itself to the charge of Islamophobia."
Mr. Stodge, indeed, although as I wrote earlier (think it was before you arrived) I agree with many, perhaps most, of the policies proposed by those swayed by the religion of Warmor, God of Warming. What you're referring to is dealing with the affects rather than assessing the cause, and I agree, regardless of what's driving the change, that's something we need to seriously consider.
The problem at the moment is everyone is fighting over the causes between those who deny there is anything happening at all and have their statistics and those who have other statistics that prove the globe is warming fast and we must do something.
My point is small-scale regional changes in climate (which many or may not be AGW-related) have much wider impacts. Small (indeed very small) rises in sea level will swamp some islands in the Pacific so the people will have to move - when ? where ? how ?
The number of times the Thames Flood Barrier had to be closed in the very wet winter of 2013-14 worries me because that's my (and indeed for many millions of other people) principal defence against tidal flooding. IF the barrier becomes insufficient, it will have to be upgraded and again that will have to be paid for.
An arid Sahel region forces people to migrate north to find better areas so they come into Libya and eventually to Europe and fetch up on a Spanish beach in dinghies and become part of Europe's refugee problem.
Yet all people on here and other forums argue about is the data and the politics. Perhaps the reality is too challenging.
The idea that it's not just white girls being targeted by the Muslim rape gangs seems to be disputed
"Britain's courts should treat Asian Muslim grooming gangs behind the abuse of hundreds of white teenage girls as racially aggravated criminals, leading MPs and campaigners have demanded.
The demand was issued as senior politicians and prosecutors admitted that political correctness may have stopped the gangs being properly pursued and punished after another ring of Asian mainly muslim sex offenders was convicted in Newcastle.
The Attorney General was facing calls to review the sentences of several members of the 18-strong Newcastle gang after it emerged the apparently racially-aggravated nature of their crimes was not reflected in their punishment."
""Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Qari Asim, a Leeds imam, says it is for Muslims to confront “cultural prejudices” that have led these men to “prey on white girls, seeing them as easy meat”.
Trevor Philips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that the grooming gangs should not be called Asians, but Muslims.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph he said: "Labelling this phenomenon an “Asian” crime is therefore an evasion. What these men have in common is not their race or nationality. It is their proclaimed faith."
That most of these men are Muslims is incontrovertible. However doing what they have been doing isn’t a characteristic of all Muslims, nor is it encouraged by their faith. And the vast majority of Muslims consider that what they do is abhorrent. Nazir Afzaal, the prosecutor, is a Muslim
Nate Silver was critical though. He thinks you should always trust your data and if it gives you the wrong result, not much you can do. The crime, he reckons, is to import an assumption (however reasonable) to distort your data.
Btw, Nate did state on election-eve that a Hung Parliament was perfectly possible given the total range of polling evidence. It wasn't the most likely result, but it was certainly plausible.
Which is what the overall majority markets were showing on election eve - that a hung parliament was possible but not likely.
Many of the individual constituency markets were way out though and very profitable they were.
Tell me about it. A lady friend asked me to stick 50 quid on a hung parliament for her. It was 10/1. I told her not to waste her money.
Naturally I did the honorable thing after the event.
This is what is odd to my mind about the general election.
You're a political aware person, interested in the political betting markets and based in London ie where the swing to Labour was highest.
Yet the result came as a surprise to you and it did to London Labour itself judging by their focus on the likes of Ealing Acton, Brentford and Tooting. For that matter the London Conservatives were campaigning in the wrong seats as well.
Whatever the polls might have been picking up before any adjustments didn't seem to match with what the politicians were experiencing on the ground.
It seems that thousands of Labour voters per constituency, maybe over ten thousand in some places, were not being picked up by the party campaigns.
I'm curious as to who these extra Labour voters are and whether they'll continue to vote.
The undecideds decided to vote and decisively broke for Labour. I came across some in my office on the day and wondered, but I didn't wonder enough.
On the Wednesday night before the election I gave a talk at work on the election and said that I thought the range of possible outcomes was unusually wide, given the volatility of the electorate, ranging from a hung Parliament to a Conservative landslide, and that neither would particularly surprise me. Unfortunately, I then said that if forced I would predict a landslide, thus ensuring that I avoided Nostradamus status.
Mr. L, are those datasets pre- or post-alteration (not being sarcastic, they revise temperature figures, and the vast majority of the time increase the figures)?
Also, scepticism about global warming is not the equivalent of not believing in gravity. The Earth's climate is immensely complex and within the narrow span of human history we've seen it vary massively without any industrial input at all.
The idea consensus means a theory is beyond challenge is far more unscientific because it suggests dogma rather than scepticism is the way we should look at existing theories.
I'm happy to leave science to the scientists rather than retired politicians on either side of the debate. If the scientific consensus is wrong then science will fix it. That is what happened with the MMR vaccine scare, and it is what happened with gravity.
The scientific consensus was that Thalidomide was fine. Eventually this was corrected, but only after irreversible harm had occurred.
Just what irreversible harm is done by developing new sources of energy and more efficient batteries ?
Not quite sure why the dig at 1997 was needed but the rest of the comment is much more worthy of discussion.
I live in East Ham - I'm convinced a form of slavery is widespread in my area. I suppose what we mean by "slavery" in 2017 is part of the issue - we may be talking about chains and individuals confined and forced to work long or very long hours in some cases but there's a lower level form of slavery where workers are forced to work every day (with little or no break or time off) and most of the money earned goes on rent or is forcibly taken by someone else.
I see them on the tube every day - men, mostly, exhausted older men subsisting on energy drinks, many of whom look in poor health but are heading off for another day of labouring on some site somewhere. They are my age if not older but they won't have a retirement to look forward to.
Mr. L, are those datasets pre- or post-alteration (not being sarcastic, they revise temperature figures, and the vast majority of the time increase the figures)?
Also, scepticism about global warming is not the equivalent of not believing in gravity. The Earth's climate is immensely complex and within the narrow span of human history we've seen it vary massively without any industrial input at all.
The idea consensus means a theory is beyond challenge is far more unscientific because it suggests dogma rather than scepticism is the way we should look at existing theories.
I'm happy to leave science to the scientists rather than retired politicians on either side of the debate. If the scientific consensus is wrong then science will fix it. That is what happened with the MMR vaccine scare, and it is what happened with gravity.
The scientific consensus was that Thalidomide was fine. Eventually this was corrected, but only after irreversible harm had occurred.
Just what irreversible harm is done by developing new sources of energy and more efficient batteries ?
The disaster that was Thalidomide led to a considerable amount of new knowledge and better practice. It’s part of the reason that you have clear information or risks supplied with medicines.
Not quite sure why the dig at 1997 was needed but the rest of the comment is much more worthy of discussion.
I live in East Ham - I'm convinced a form of slavery is widespread in my area. I suppose what we mean by "slavery" in 2017 is part of the issue - we may be talking about chains and individuals confined and forced to work long or very long hours in some cases but there's a lower level form of slavery where workers are forced to work every day (with little or no break or time off) and most of the money earned goes on rent or is forcibly taken by someone else.
I see them on the tube every day - men, mostly, exhausted older men subsisting on energy drinks, many of whom look in poor health but are heading off for another day of labouring on some site somewhere. They are my age if not older but they won't have a retirement to look forward to.
Behind every great fortune is a crime forgotten. The BBC exposed this modern day slavery last month. As if big business wouldn't exploit immigrant labour! They have the perfect get out - anyone who rumbles what they're doing is a small minded xenophobe
I have not seen any sensible theory or explanation that refutes that the globe is warming or that 'natural causes' are not the cause of this.
The Globe is not as warm today as it has been in the past.
Humans have released a third of all the CO2 they have ever released in just the last 20 years, yet it's colder than in mediaeval times.
Probably CO2 does have an effect, but it is simply silly to assert that it will have x effect over the next 100 years. You cannot forecast the human population, major technology change, energy sources (hence emissions) or energy prices (which determine energy sources) over 100-year timescales. So every term in such equations is a SWAG.
A strange hysteria not seen anywhere else in academia seems to be a prerequisite for working in climate science. In particular they seem keen on ludicrous tabloidesque prophecies that are usually about things that will happen in 100 years. This may be because on any shorter timescale, the prophets are still around to be laughed at when farcically wrong. This one was a special favourite of mine: 50m environmental refugees by end of decade, UN warns https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1 That's by 2010 to be clear, not 2020.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider said this to Discover magazine in 1989: We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
If you say upfront that you're going to exaggerate and lie to persuade people of something that even you aren't sure of yourself, you should expect disbelief.
We should revisit the issue in 50 years and see if it is even still an issue. If it is, we'll be so rich by then that we won't notice the cost of fixing it. If it's not we'll have saved ourselves trillions.
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Thanks Richard. Interesting comment and I'll try to respond briefly, although I have no special insights to offer. I will however repeat a short anecdote I have mentioned on here before.
On the day before the election I took a North London line train to Hampstead and part of the way I listened in to a conversation between three young men, evidently well educated but otherwise rather silly. They were all Corbyn supporters. Two were planning to vote the next day but the third had failed to register. Apparently he'd been asked for his NI number and that had proved too difficult. This rather persuaded me that Labour's youthful support was no more likely to turn out in greater numbers than usual. Wrong, eh?
When I arrived at Hampstead, there were some young canvassers at the station and we had a long and friendly chat. Hampstead was of course super-marginal and as I had a small amount at 4/1 on Tulip Siddiq I was keen to know what they thought. They were nervous - hopeful rather than confident. When I told them her price had shortened to about evens they cheered up immensly and wanted to know more. Somehow this didn't reassure me and I later hedged my bets. Siddiq won by 15,000.
Finally, when I arrived at my friend's house she surprised me by saying she had voted Labour (by post). 'I thought you hated Corbyn', I said. 'Yes' she replied 'but I hate Theresa May more.' Since I didn't share her antipathy, I shrugged this off as a quirky explanation.
All straws in the wind. All very confusing. We weren't the only people to get it wrong. We were in very good company. My own predominant feeling is that a lot of the kids made the effort to get out and vote, motivated perhaps by regret at the Brexit outcome. A lot of remainers may have done the same.
I expect however that political analysts will still be studying this election result for many years to come.
I have not seen any sensible theory or explanation that refutes that the globe is warming or that 'natural causes' are not the cause of this.
The Globe is not as warm today as it has been in the past.
Humans have released a third of all the CO2 they have ever released in just the last 20 years, yet it's colder than in mediaeval times.
Probably CO2 does have an effect, but it is simply silly to assert that it will have x effect over the next 100 years. You cannot forecast the human population, major technology change, energy sources (hence emissions) or energy prices (which determine energy sources) over 100-year timescales. So every term in such equations is a SWAG.
A strange hysteria not seen anywhere else in academia seems to be a prerequisite for working in climate science. In particular they seem keen on ludicrous tabloidesque prophecies that are usually about things that will happen in 100 years. This may be because on any shorter timescale, the prophets are still around to be laughed at when farcically wrong. This one was a special favourite of mine: 50m environmental refugees by end of decade, UN warns https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1 That's by 2010 to be clear, not 2020.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider said this to Discover magazine in 1989: We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
If you say upfront that you're going to exaggerate and lie to persuade people of something that even you aren't sure of yourself, you should expect disbelief.
We should revisit the issue in 50 years and see if it is even still an issue. If it is, we'll be so rich by then that we won't notice the cost of fixing it. If it's not we'll have saved ourselves trillions.
"Humans have released a third of all the CO2 they have ever released in just the last 20 years, yet it's colder than in mediaeval times."
Simply not true. It is MUCH warmer now. We are in uncharted territory.
All other things being equal it seems obvious that releasing billions of tonnes of stored carbon into the atmosphere over the last century or two should increase the average temperature of the planet. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and increases the amount of heat we absorb from the sun.
My scepticism, such as it is, is that this effect has taken place in a very complex system where there are a large number of counter balancing effects including the output of the sun, volcanic activity and the ability of the system to compensate (increased CO2 should stimulate plant growth for example).
I think assuming that the system will cope is foolish and an unnecessary risk. I find the argument that there may well be a step changes where the system becomes unbalanced very credible. It makes sense to proceed with renewable energy both for global warming reasons and to improve the quality of air we breath. It makes no sense to keep our economy reliant on a finite resource. It makes sense to be more efficient in the use of energy. It makes sense to reduce a risk that has potentially seriously adverse effects, particularly when there are beneficial side effects.
I was a great admirer of Lawson as Chancellor and his book The View from Number 11 remains one of the best books about development of government policy I have ever read. But he is wrong about this and not just in his facts.
Mr. L, science is a great method, its only weak spot is it requires scientists to advance.
For 200 years after Newton's death, his mistaken views of light went almost unchallenged because anyone who dared implicitly criticise the great man by suggesting he might have been wrong had their head blown off (metaphorically) for their heresy.
We need scepticism in science, because otherwise flawed theories aren't improved and false theories aren't proven wrong.
The MMR vaccine was quite different as, if memory serves, it was one buffoon conducting experiments in an unscientific way and then using his flawed conclusions to frighten the public and ill-informed media who regurgitated his idiocy.
I'm deeply suspicious of those who want to silence critics of a given theory by saying "That's wrongthink, you cannot believe or express that view" rather than simply explaining why they believe it's wrong.
A 299 page report on climate change in 2016 with 30 pages of references is downloadable here:
The correlation between right wing politics and climate change scepticism is not one based on science, it is because action on climate change requires 2 things that are anathema to right wingers: Co-operation via international organisations, and changes to the economy that they see as anti business.
That goes impressively off piste not once, but twice. You don't do science by counting pages and footnotes, nor by imputing motive to your opponents instead of addressing their arguments. I understand you are a doctor, in which case it is a bit disturbing that you need telling that. Here is a 400 word treatise with 50 pages of footnotes saying that homeopathy works, and anyone saying different is in the pay of Big Pharma.
Homeopathy does work - as a placebo. For my money, the most astounding evolutionary adaptation of all is the placebo effect. If a human who's ill genuinely believes that something will make her better, it does. It's frigging amazing.
If there were no working medicines at all you could still have a medical profession. For most of history that's what most societies have had. Whether it's a bloke dressed up as a shaman muttering spells in a trance and giving you a lizard's eyeball to swallow, or a bloke in a white coat and stethoscope muttering an incantation ("I'll just give you something for the pain") then handing you a chalk pill, if you think it'll work it does.
There's no placebo that will replicate a hip replacement of course. But on the whole I think I like the Roman model of medicine. The Romans paid their doctor when they were well and stopped doing so if they fell ill. They only started paying again when they got better.
Behind every great fortune is a crime forgotten. The BBC exposed this modern day slavery last month. As if big business wouldn't exploit immigrant labour! They have the perfect get out - anyone who rumbles what they're doing is a small minded xenophobe
Of course, capitalism is built on exploitation (to a point) and it took a long time for working people to get a reasonable wage and working conditions and the notion of workers having paid holiday would have been laughable not so long ago.
Now, we see a reversion to the earlier phase of capitalism where an unending supply of cheap labour can be exploited in terms of low pay forcing people to work every day to survive. Yes, you can have a day off but you'll get no money which means you won't be able to afford the rent on your tiny little room in the semi you share with a dozen other men and it'll either be living rough or having to go back to wherever with nothing.
This is where the Single Market ends up - no wonder so much of business loves it.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nate Silver was critical though. He thinks you should always trust your data and if it gives you the wrong result, not much you can do. The crime, he reckons, is to import an assumption (however reasonable) to distort your data.
Btw, Nate did state on election-eve that a Hung Parliament was perfectly possible given the total range of polling evidence. It wasn't the most likely result, but it was certainly plausible.
Which is what the overall majority markets were showing on election eve - that a hung parliament was possible but not likely.
Many of the individual constituency markets were way out though and very profitable they were.
Tell me about it. A lady friend asked me to stick 50 quid on a hung parliament for her. It was 10/1. I told her not to waste her money.
Naturally I did the honorable thing after the event.
This is what is odd to my mind about the general election.
You're a political aware person, interested in the political betting markets and based in London ie where the swing to Labour was highest.
Yet the result came as a surprise to you and it did to London Labour itself judging by their focus on the likes of Ealing Acton, Brentford and Tooting. For that matter the London Conservatives were campaigning in the wrong seats as well.
Whatever the polls might have been picking up before any adjustments didn't seem to match with what the politicians were experiencing on the ground.
It seems that thousands of Labour voters per constituency, maybe over ten thousand in some places, were not being picked up by the party campaigns.
I'm curious as to who these extra Labour voters are and whether they'll continue to vote.
The undecideds decided to vote and decisively broke for Labour. I came across some in my office on the day and wondered, but I didn't wonder enough.
On the Wednesday night before the election I gave a talk at work on the election and said that I thought the range of possible outcomes was unusually wide, given the volatility of the electorate, ranging from a hung Parliament to a Conservative landslide, and that neither would particularly surprise me. Unfortunately, I then said that if forced I would predict a landslide, thus ensuring that I avoided Nostradamus status.
Lol! That was pretty much my take except for the landslide bit. I'd pencilled in 75 seat majority.
Happily the only serious bet I had was a buy of Labour Seats at 160 - but that was only because I thought they were oversold and low risk at that level. I burst out laughing when the exit poll was announced.
I have not seen any sensible theory or explanation that refutes that the globe is warming or that 'natural causes' are not the cause of this.
The Globe is not as warm today as it has been in the past.
Humans have released a third of all the CO2 they have ever released in just the last 20 years, yet it's colder than in mediaeval times.
Probably CO2 does have an effect, but it is simply silly to assert that it will have x effect over the next 100 years. You cannot forecast the human population, major technology change, energy sources (hence emissions) or energy prices (which determine energy sources) over 100-year timescales. So every term in such equations is a SWAG.
A strange hysteria not seen anywhere else in academia seems to be a prerequisite for working in climate science. In particular they seem keen on ludicrous tabloidesque prophecies that are usually about things that will happen in 100 years. This may be because on any shorter timescale, the prophets are still around to be laughed at when farcically wrong. This one was a special favourite of mine: 50m environmental refugees by end of decade, UN warns https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1 That's by 2010 to be clear, not 2020.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider said this to Discover magazine in 1989: We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
If you say upfront that you're going to exaggerate and lie to persuade people of something that even you aren't sure of yourself, you should expect disbelief.
We should revisit the issue in 50 years and see if it is even still an issue. If it is, we'll be so rich by then that we won't notice the cost of fixing it. If it's not we'll have saved ourselves trillions.
"Humans have released a third of all the CO2 they have ever released in just the last 20 years, yet it's colder than in mediaeval times."
Simply not true. It is MUCH warmer now. We are in uncharted territory.
It may be much warmer now but, as per for example the R4 piece this morning when we were told that it is the warmest it's been for 100 years, my question is how efficient global temperature readings were 100 years ago.
As attested by the Met Office, even the GISTEMP temperature readings in the modern era, especially their interpolation of observational data over the polar regions, are being glossed over with a large correlation length, and hence cannot be seen as definitive.
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Many of us on here are gamblers, and as such would be apt to take a punter's perspective.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Many of us on here are gamblers, and as such would be apt to take a punter's perspective.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
One caveat to be born in mind however is that even if Labour gained all the seats on it they would still be well short of a majority. 24 seats short to be exact.
Meanwhile a 3% uniform swing (which I know in practice is as unlikely as me voting for Gove) would deliver the Tories a majority of around 20. Moreover with a lot of those seats being very tight Tory defeats last time there is clearly a reservoir of voters to draw on, many of whom will still be shocked at losing this year.
Although generally governments once they start losing seats keep doing so, there are logistical reasons why that may not happen this time. Enormously helped of course by Labour's complacency about how far behind they are.
How would one go about determining how complacent Labour are about how far they are behind? And how is it so enormously helpful? And if you believe that Labour is complacent in a helpful way, how do you avoid that making you complacent?
I'm a swing voter saying it how I see it and even my tribal Labour friends are worried Corbyn has behaved like an arrogant fool since the election.
Your point being?
Corbyn seems to genuinely believe he won and his natural brilliance will make him PM shortly. He has looked like a less shouty, less intelligent version of Trump. True, he came close in the popular vote but Labour are below where they were in 1992 and barely ahead of 2010 in terms of seats. Yet nobody is telling Labour the hard truth that they lost and lost badly and need to do much better next time. They are lazily assuming a few more seats and a slightly less popular government will deliver them a win.
I would be surprised if the Tories picked up more votes. But I can easily foresee under these circumstances Labour's vote falling by more than theirs.
Mr. L, are those datasets pre- or post-alteration (not being sarcastic, they revise temperature figures, and the vast majority of the time increase the figures)?
Also, scepticism about global warming is not the equivalent of not believing in gravity. The Earth's climate is immensely complex and within the narrow span of human history we've seen it vary massively without any industrial input at all.
The idea consensus means a theory is beyond challenge is far more unscientific because it suggests dogma rather than scepticism is the way we should look at existing theories.
I'm happy to leave science to the scientists rather than retired politicians on either side of the debate. If the scientific consensus is wrong then science will fix it. That is what happened with the MMR vaccine scare, and it is what happened with gravity.
The scientific consensus was that Thalidomide was fine. Eventually this was corrected, but only after irreversible harm had occurred.
Just what irreversible harm is done by developing new sources of energy and more efficient batteries ?
Well, deaths, obviously.
Green initiatives are not benignly limited to new sources of energy and more efficient batteries. It was green concerns that led to the dieselisation of Europe which we now know has caused thousands of deaths that petrol would not have caused. Green taxes make heating your home more expensive and have led to fuel poverty, a form of poverty re-invented by environmentalism.
One of the biggest causes of deaths in the third world is indoor air pollution, about which the green movement is all but silent because the solution is LPG.
The LDs learned a lot during the coalition about the mechanics of such an arrangement and even though they've only got a dozen seats would strike a very hard bargain which LAB find difficult to accept. Remember Vince got stitched up by Osborne on tuition fees and will be very wary about any deal with LAB who would just expect the yellows to fall in line.
I'd hope the LDs learnt a lot from Coalition! In practice - I'd have thought Labour would be so keen to get back into power they'd do a deal with the LDems.
Areas of agreement: Wealth/property taxes, reducing tuition fees, civil liberties, increased capital investment(?), more generous welfare.
Areas of disagreement: Nationalisations. Potentially trident renewal?
Unclear how far along Brexit will be... I think Corbyn/Labour could support a 2nd referendum, or staying in single market if that's an option...
Doesn't feel like the two parties are so far apart... can you think of other problematic areas?
As an aside - my understanding is more that Clegg didn't care about tuition fees and was happy to offer it as a concession rather than Osborne somehow outwitted the LDems in negotiations.
I think you need to add fiscal incontinence to your areas of disagreement.
I think I'm right in saying the largest day to day spending commitment from Labour was the tuition fees pledge. Would LDs really take a stand on this? Or on increased NHS or education spending?
The LDems were planning to reverse more benefits cuts than Labour. The LDems were also planning income tax rises for a much larger proportion of the population - I suspect Corbyn could get on board with that. The LDems proposed a smaller corp. tax increase - again I'm sure an agreement could be found.
Haven't the figures to prove it, not that they were accurate anyway, but I'm pretty sure their extra spending on secondary education would outstrip total spending on universities.
It was, also, worryingly, meant to be funded by money that would have been drastically reduced by their other policies.
I'm a swing voter saying it how I see it and even my tribal Labour friends are worried Corbyn has behaved like an arrogant fool since the election.
Your point being?
Corbyn seems to genuinely believe he won and his natural brilliance will make him PM shortly. He has looked like a less shouty, less intelligent version of Trump. True, he came close in the popular vote but Labour are below where they were in 1992 and barely ahead of 2010 in terms of seats. Yet nobody is telling Labour the hard truth that they lost and lost badly and need to do much better next time. They are lazily assuming a few more seats and a slightly less popular government will deliver them a win.
I would be surprised if the Tories picked up more votes. But I can easily foresee under these circumstances Labour's vote falling by more than theirs.
At the moment - Corbyn is out campaigning in marginal seats. Since the election he has said Labour will be in permanent campaign mode. I wouldn't characterise that as lazy or complacent.
If anything it might be a bit of a waste of time- since it looks as though the next election will be a while away...
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Many of us on here are gamblers, and as such would be apt to take a punter's perspective.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
Nate Silver was critical though. He thinks you should always trust your data and if it gives you the wrong result, not much you can do. The crime, he reckons, is to import an assumption (however reasonable) to distort your data.
Btw, Nate did state on election-eve that a Hung Parliament was perfectly possible given the total range of polling evidence. It wasn't the most likely result, but it was certainly plausible.
Many of the individual constituency markets were way out though and very profitable they were.
Tell me about it. A lady friend asked me to stick 50 quid on a hung parliament for her. It was 10/1. I told her not to waste her money.
Naturally I did the honorable thing after the event.
This is what is odd to my mind about the general election.
You're a political aware person, interested in the political betting markets and based in London ie where the swing to Labour was highest.
Yet the result came as a surprise to you and it did to London Labour itself judging by their focus on the likes of Ealing Acton, Brentford and Tooting. For that matter the London Conservatives were campaigning in the wrong seats as well.
I'm curious as to who these extra Labour voters are and whether they'll continue to vote.
On the Wednesday night before the election I gave a talk at work on the election and said that I thought the range of possible outcomes was unusually wide, given the volatility of the electorate, ranging from a hung Parliament to a Conservative landslide, and that neither would particularly surprise me. Unfortunately, I then said that if forced I would predict a landslide, thus ensuring that I avoided Nostradamus status.
Lol! That was pretty much my take except for the landslide bit. I'd pencilled in 75 seat majority.
Happily the only serious bet I had was a buy of Labour Seats at 160 - but that was only because I thought they were oversold and low risk at that level. I burst out laughing when the exit poll was announced.
We were going on holiday quite early on 9th June, and on the evening of the 8th we’d packed everything and I was closing down the electronics etc for the fortnight when I heard the 10pm News come on. 'Are you coming to watch’ asked my wife. ‘No, it’ll only depress me too much!’ I replied. Couple of minutes later an excited voice called to me ‘They say it’s a hung Parliament’ And was in front of the TV like a shot!
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nope, I can't see any prediction of New York being underwater by 2020:
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Many of us on here are gamblers, and as such would be apt to take a punter's perspective.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
There's also a great opportunity to develop new technologies that *may* diversify and localise our energy production, and also reduce reliance on oil and gas (especially oil and gas from the ME).
Reducing reliance on ME o&g would be good not just for us, but probably also the local populations.
I'm sceptical about some aspects of climate change, and especially the predictions of consequences. But that doesn't mean that we can't get positives out of the situation if we're careful.
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Many of us on here are gamblers, and as such would be apt to take a punter's perspective.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
Pascal's wager for climate.
Yup, kind of. And of course it begs the question as to how much you hedge, how catastrophic the risk etc. But the principle is sound. And in any case I have a son who is in the biz. He says the science is sound, and I trust him.
The Tories should be encouraged that 8 Labour seats they need to target have a majority of less than 1%, enough for an overall majority. While having 10 reasonably safe Tory seats in Scotland, especially in rural areas, will also boost them
And Labour should be equally encouraged about how many small majorities a lot of the Tories have ( including cabinet members)
I would hardly call the Scottish seats 'safe'.
It would be a very good thing for democracy if all seats were marginal.
But they're not. For example, Labour have never held any part of Moray. And the Conservatives have no chance in Tredegar.
The worrying thing about this "natural" change is the speed of change and the fact that some areas of the world (and some of the most ecologically significant) are saying the most rapid change and that "tipping points" may be approaching whereby more profound and irreversible change is unleashed.
Can you have an irreversible tipping point that is lower than previous peaks?
Yes.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term. From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Many of us on here are gamblers, and as such would be apt to take a punter's perspective.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
That's exactly how phone shops sell phone insurance where the premiums cost more than a new phone, and the payout is less than a new phone.
ydoethur: Haven't the figures to prove it, not that they were accurate anyway, but I'm pretty sure their extra spending on secondary education would outstrip total spending on universities.
It was, also, worryingly, meant to be funded by money that would have been drastically reduced by their other policies.
*** messed up quotations **** Read from here ****
I'd be quite surprised if that was the case - the figure I've seen for secondary education is 28bn total.
The increase in university spending was estimated by Labour as 11.2bn and by the IFS as 13.4bn, dropping to 8.8bn in the long-run.
Labour proposed a 1.6% real increase in funding/pupil - that surely can't equal a c. 40% increase in overall secondary budget.
For completeness - the Lib Dems proposed maintaining at current per pupil funding levels.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nope, I can't see any prediction of New York being underwater by 2020:
It may be much warmer now but, as per for example the R4 piece this morning when we were told that it is the warmest it's been for 100 years, my question is how efficient global temperature readings were 100 years ago.
As attested by the Met Office, even the GISTEMP temperature readings in the modern era, especially their interpolation of observational data over the polar regions, are being glossed over with a large correlation length, and hence cannot be seen as definitive.
There are small differences between the three main surface temperature reconstructions due to differences in data sources and processing, but they are very minor. They all show roughly a degree C of warming over the last century.
That's exactly how phone shops sell phone insurance where the premiums cost more than a new phone, and the payout is less than a new phone.
The phone market is interesting where the true markup on a phone "free" with a contract is always very profitable. Phone contracts are always invariably credit agreements too, not sure everyone realises that.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue." I BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nope, I can't see any prediction of New York being underwater by 2020:
While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
(It appears this should be 40 years, instead of 20. It's still an interesting prediction).
It may be much warmer now but, as per for example the R4 piece this morning when we were told that it is the warmest it's been for 100 years, my question is how efficient global temperature readings were 100 years ago.
As attested by the Met Office, even the GISTEMP temperature readings in the modern era, especially their interpolation of observational data over the polar regions, are being glossed over with a large correlation length, and hence cannot be seen as definitive.
There are small differences between the three main surface temperature reconstructions due to differences in data sources and processing, but they are very minor. They all show roughly a degree C of warming over the last century.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nope, I can't see any prediction of New York being underwater by 2020:
Sea levels have been rising secularly for a couple of hundred years at least.
Your reference doesn't support your claim, and it is simply wrong to state that sea levels have been rising secularly for a couple of hundred years at least.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
(...)
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nope, I can't see any prediction of New York being underwater by 2020:
While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
(It appears this should be 40 years, instead of 20. It's still an interesting prediction).
It implies a ten-foot sea level rise over 40 years. 29 years on one would expect to have seen 7 feet or so of that. So far, nothing. Nobody seems to be predicting the full ten feet in the remaining 11 years.
It is the same as those end-of-the-world cults that carry on even when the leader was wrong and changes the date. Anthropologically it is quite interesting how religion arises in every society, no matter how advanced, in one form or another.
I'm a swing voter saying it how I see it and even my tribal Labour friends are worried Corbyn has behaved like an arrogant fool since the election.
Your point being?
Corbyn seems to genuinely believe he won and his natural brilliance will make him PM shortly. He has looked like a less shouty, less intelligent version of Trump. True, he came close in the popular vote but Labour are below where they were in 1992 and barely ahead of 2010 in terms of seats. Yet nobody is telling Labour the hard truth that they lost and lost badly and need to do much better next time. They are lazily assuming a few more seats and a slightly less popular government will deliver them a win.
I would be surprised if the Tories picked up more votes. But I can easily foresee under these circumstances Labour's vote falling by more than theirs.
At the moment - Corbyn is out campaigning in marginal seats. Since the election he has said Labour will be in permanent campaign mode. I wouldn't characterise that as lazy or complacent.
If anything it might be a bit of a waste of time- since it looks as though the next election will be a while away...
Yes it is, because he's assuming he will win them. If I were him, I'd be firming up my support in the semi-marginals so I could go hammer and tongs at the marginals when it matters.
As for permanent campaign mode, again he is assuming there will be an election. Complacency again. Even you're acknowledging that.
I dislike Corbyn. But I am allowing for that. His performance since the election has been surprisingly inept given his sure-footed response in the campaign, and it's far too easy to see the parallels with 1992.
Mr. L, are those datasets pre- or post-alteration (not being sarcastic, they revise temperature figures, and the vast majority of the time increase the figures)?
Also, scepticism about global warming is not the equivalent of not believing in gravity. The Earth's climate is immensely complex and within the narrow span of human history we've seen it vary massively without any industrial input at all.
The idea consensus means a theory is beyond challenge is far more unscientific because it suggests dogma rather than scepticism is the way we should look at existing theories.
I'm happy to leave science to the scientists rather than retired politicians on either side of the debate. If the scientific consensus is wrong then science will fix it. That is what happened with the MMR vaccine scare, and it is what happened with gravity.
The scientific consensus was that Thalidomide was fine. Eventually this was corrected, but only after irreversible harm had occurred.
Just what irreversible harm is done by developing new sources of energy and more efficient batteries ?
Well, deaths, obviously.
Green initiatives are not benignly limited to new sources of energy and more efficient batteries. It was green concerns that led to the dieselisation of Europe which we now know has caused thousands of deaths that petrol would not have caused. Green taxes make heating your home more expensive and have led to fuel poverty, a form of poverty re-invented by environmentalism.
One of the biggest causes of deaths in the third world is indoor air pollution, about which the green movement is all but silent because the solution is LPG.
Diesel is not exactly a new source of energy.
Is *the* solution LPG - and if so, how is "the Green movement" stopping it being employed ? Or is it solar ?
"Green taxes make heating your home more expensive and have led to fuel poverty..." What percentage increase in heating bills do you attribute to UK 'green taxes' - and what reduction to subsidies for insulation ? And please demonstrate that in itself has led to fuel poverty.
It may be much warmer now but, as per for example the R4 piece this morning when we were told that it is the warmest it's been for 100 years, my question is how efficient global temperature readings were 100 years ago.
As attested by the Met Office, even the GISTEMP temperature readings in the modern era, especially their interpolation of observational data over the polar regions, are being glossed over with a large correlation length, and hence cannot be seen as definitive.
There are small differences between the three main surface temperature reconstructions due to differences in data sources and processing, but they are very minor. They all show roughly a degree C of warming over the last century.
So your 'its not a conspiracy' argument is that the "reconstruction"/fiddling has been applied equally? Okay. Based on that it's actually much easier to make the argument in the other direction.
ydoethur: Haven't the figures to prove it, not that they were accurate anyway, but I'm pretty sure their extra spending on secondary education would outstrip total spending on universities.
It was, also, worryingly, meant to be funded by money that would have been drastically reduced by their other policies.
*** messed up quotations **** Read from here ****
I'd be quite surprised if that was the case - the figure I've seen for secondary education is 28bn total.
The increase in university spending was estimated by Labour as 11.2bn and by the IFS as 13.4bn, dropping to 8.8bn in the long-run.
Labour proposed a 1.6% real increase in funding/pupil - that surely can't equal a c. 40% increase in overall secondary budget.
For completeness - the Lib Dems proposed maintaining at current per pupil funding levels.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
Well, it's doing a pretty good job so far. Back in 1981, James Hansen, who was head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 32 years, predicted that, by now, the global temperature would have increased by about 0.5 C, and that this increase would be concentrated at the poles. He was pretty much spot on.
Unfortunately he also predicted that New York would be underwater by 2020.
Nope, I can't see any prediction of New York being underwater by 2020:
Sea levels have been rising secularly for a couple of hundred years at least.
Your reference doesn't support your claim, and it is simply wrong to state that sea levels have been rising secularly for a couple of hundred years at least.
Since the EU referendum UK exports have increased by 11.4%, as British goods and services are in demand across the world, ONS figures show.
In US Dollars or Euros, our exports have declined since the referendum.
I read yesterday somewhere that devaluation doesn't seem to help exports as much as they used to because products are mostly produced in an international system. You would expect as the USD/Euro conversion of the sterling prices fell, that UK products would be more competitive. Actually UK manufacturers have to raise sterling prices to cover their higher input costs. Devaluation of your currency isn't the quick fix it used to be.
"Prominent right wing YouTube users say the site is censoring them.
Trump-supporting accounts like Paul Joseph Watson and Diamond and Silk say the site is stopping them making money from their videos and hiding them from viewers. And some have said that the censorship is so bad they will be leaving YouTube entirely.
The complaints come in the middle of a controversy surrounding the Google memo, which circulated around the YouTube owner and claimed that its diversity agenda was wrong. Many prominent right-wing personalities have taken up the cause of James Damore, who wrote the memo and was subsequently fired."
Comments
a) Create more wealth
b) Live within your means
c) Increase your savings ratio
As the UK has had a current account deficit of £250bn over the last three years the downward pressure on sterling will continue.
On the wider question, we obviously don't know what's going to happen. Will we see the strong Conservative performances in the north of England and the midlands replicated next time ? Don't know.
If there is a strong tide running against a party, there's nowhere to hide as all parties will know from experience. There were some huge swings in June - some of the largest since 1997 and the kind you see only rarely (if at all) in most elections where swings ins eats are generally near to UNS.
"They want to keep finding excuses for inaction, and to continue polluting the world."
When I were t'lad, I used to believe that science is always objective. Unfortunately, there is sometimes politics in science. What is funded and what is not. And what is published and what is not.
I've no problems with activists invoking the 'precautionary principle'. However it ought to be up front, and not ignored in favour of "the science is settled, none may argue."
BTW, I agree about Newton. His theories were built on rather than scrapped, but it does show the dangers of always going with the flow. When it comes to wave/particle duality, there's a famous father and son duo called Thomson. One received a Nobel prize for showing the electron was a particle, the other received it for showing it was a wave.
I'd be much happier to accept AGW once it can be shown to be predictive. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.
http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/business/students-poised-to-move-in-at-sheffield-s-65m-new-era-development-1-8696788
Looks to be progressing well to be fair, though obviously a bit of developer's license with the "finishing touches" term..
I would hardly call the Scottish seats 'safe'.
That whoosh you just heard? It's Chinese money pulling back from property in London to Sydney to New York.
Capital centres globally should brace for tumbling real-estate prices as Beijing manages to do what Brexit and higher interest rates haven't.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/that-whoosh-its-the-great-chinese-property-pullback-20170807-gxrfbc.html
You have utterly utterly missed the point and got it completely backwards.
Newton's theories were wrong and they weren't challenged or questioned for too long because they were adopted too readily and too widely. To question the ideas of the Great Man was heresy.
Naturally I did the honorable thing after the event.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/839740/Brexit-James-Chapman-Jacob-rees-mogg-bbc-today-david-davis-eu-uk-democrats-theresa-may
In the meantime, the precautionary principle seems entirely sensible to me. What is incontrovertible is the manmade large increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last few decades, and if we wait long enough for certainty and the predictions are correct, it will be to late to address the problem.
In the meantime, the subsidies which have kickstarted the renewable industries look quite likely to be justified purely on economic grounds.
The passion that some denialists/sceptics/whatever you want to call them seem to have for fossil fuels utterly bemuses me.
"Britain's courts should treat Asian Muslim grooming gangs behind the abuse of hundreds of white teenage girls as racially aggravated criminals, leading MPs and campaigners have demanded.
The demand was issued as senior politicians and prosecutors admitted that political correctness may have stopped the gangs being properly pursued and punished after another ring of Asian mainly muslim sex offenders was convicted in Newcastle.
The Attorney General was facing calls to review the sentences of several members of the 18-strong Newcastle gang after it emerged the apparently racially-aggravated nature of their crimes was not reflected in their punishment."
http://bit.ly/2uu9PhY
I'll make that sort of prediction too. In about 20 years or so, the measured global increase will be around one degree centigrade, give or take a bit..
If it's 2 degrees, I'll still claim I was right. If t's about 0 degrees, I will claim I was near enough. That's called extrapolation.
Given we are 7 billion or so now and certainly far more than in the times of Henry VIII, let alone Claudius, small changes to the climate can profoundly affect millions of people directly and tens of millions more indirectly.
We have seen for ourselves the consequences of economic migration - if we see whole populations having to move because their regional climate has changed, that may count for little on a global basis climatically but have severe political, economic and social ramifications.
IF sea level rises, do we spend billions defending coastal cities like Shanghai, London and New York and what about those coastal cities in other areas where the country concerned may not be able to afford costly flood defences ?
Those who thought the Sun went round the Earth were adamant they were right and persecuted those who took a different view.
Trevor Philips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that the grooming gangs should not be called Asians, but Muslims.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph he said: "Labelling this phenomenon an “Asian” crime is therefore an evasion. What these men have in common is not their race or nationality. It is their proclaimed faith."
You're a political aware person, interested in the political betting markets and based in London ie where the swing to Labour was highest.
Yet the result came as a surprise to you and it did to London Labour itself judging by their focus on the likes of Ealing Acton, Brentford and Tooting. For that matter the London Conservatives were campaigning in the wrong seats as well.
Whatever the polls might have been picking up before any adjustments didn't seem to match with what the politicians were experiencing on the ground.
It seems that thousands of Labour voters per constituency, maybe over ten thousand in some places, were not being picked up by the party campaigns.
I'm curious as to who these extra Labour voters are and whether they'll continue to vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour,_New_Danger#/media/File:New_Labour_New_Danger.gif
"Labelling this phenomenon an “Asian” crime is therefore an evasion. It also insults the largest single ethnic minority group in the UK – Hindu Indians – who consider themselves Asian, and the many East Asians who have made the UK their home. Neither group has been even remotely associated with these crimes.
What the perpetrators have in common is their proclaimed faith. They are Muslims, and many of them would claim to be practising. It is not Islamophobic to point this out, any more than it would be racist to point out that the most active persecutors of LGBT people come from countries where most people are, like me, black.
If we are going to call a spade a spade, then we should do so without embarrassment. But our elites have replaced their old fear of being called racist with a new bogey. It comes to something when the BBC prefers to risk being condemned for racism than expose itself to the charge of Islamophobia."
http://bit.ly/2uu9PhY
My point is small-scale regional changes in climate (which many or may not be AGW-related) have much wider impacts. Small (indeed very small) rises in sea level will swamp some islands in the Pacific so the people will have to move - when ? where ? how ?
The number of times the Thames Flood Barrier had to be closed in the very wet winter of 2013-14 worries me because that's my (and indeed for many millions of other people) principal defence against tidal flooding. IF the barrier becomes insufficient, it will have to be upgraded and again that will have to be paid for.
An arid Sahel region forces people to migrate north to find better areas so they come into Libya and eventually to Europe and fetch up on a Spanish beach in dinghies and become part of Europe's refugee problem.
Yet all people on here and other forums argue about is the data and the politics. Perhaps the reality is too challenging.
from 1hr 20mins onwards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zzlxp
Nazir Afzaal, the prosecutor, is a Muslim
On the Wednesday night before the election I gave a talk at work on the election and said that I thought the range of possible outcomes was unusually wide, given the volatility of the electorate, ranging from a hung Parliament to a Conservative landslide, and that neither would particularly surprise me. Unfortunately, I then said that if forced I would predict a landslide, thus ensuring that I avoided Nostradamus status.
*ritually disembowels self*
Edited extra bit: bloody hell. I wrote 'rituals' initially. Clearly, woe has afflicted me today.
I live in East Ham - I'm convinced a form of slavery is widespread in my area. I suppose what we mean by "slavery" in 2017 is part of the issue - we may be talking about chains and individuals confined and forced to work long or very long hours in some cases but there's a lower level form of slavery where workers are forced to work every day (with little or no break or time off) and most of the money earned goes on rent or is forcibly taken by someone else.
I see them on the tube every day - men, mostly, exhausted older men subsisting on energy drinks, many of whom look in poor health but are heading off for another day of labouring on some site somewhere. They are my age if not older but they won't have a retirement to look forward to.
It’s part of the reason that you have clear information or risks supplied with medicines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-london-40512248
Probably CO2 does have an effect, but it is simply silly to assert that it will have x effect over the next 100 years. You cannot forecast the human population, major technology change, energy sources (hence emissions) or energy prices (which determine energy sources) over 100-year timescales. So every term in such equations is a SWAG.
A strange hysteria not seen anywhere else in academia seems to be a prerequisite for working in climate science. In particular they seem keen on ludicrous tabloidesque prophecies that are usually about things that will happen in 100 years. This may be because on any shorter timescale, the prophets are still around to be laughed at when farcically wrong. This one was a special favourite of mine:
50m environmental refugees by end of decade, UN warns
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1
That's by 2010 to be clear, not 2020.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider said this to Discover magazine in 1989:
We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
If you say upfront that you're going to exaggerate and lie to persuade people of something that even you aren't sure of yourself, you should expect disbelief.
We should revisit the issue in 50 years and see if it is even still an issue. If it is, we'll be so rich by then that we won't notice the cost of fixing it. If it's not we'll have saved ourselves trillions.
From a geological perspective, the temperature changes we are talking about can, of course, be dismissed as minor, but that is of scant consolation if we make significant portions of the currently inhabited parts of the globe uninhabitable in the near term.
From a geological perspective, the current effort towards mitigating climate change is the shortest of short term policies. From a perspective of humanity, a couple of centuries of breathing space, if we can achieve it, is just what we need.
Link?
"I'm curious as to who these extra Labour voters are and whether they'll continue to vote."
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Thanks Richard. Interesting comment and I'll try to respond briefly, although I have no special insights to offer. I will however repeat a short anecdote I have mentioned on here before.
On the day before the election I took a North London line train to Hampstead and part of the way I listened in to a conversation between three young men, evidently well educated but otherwise rather silly. They were all Corbyn supporters. Two were planning to vote the next day but the third had failed to register. Apparently he'd been asked for his NI number and that had proved too difficult. This rather persuaded me that Labour's youthful support was no more likely to turn out in greater numbers than usual. Wrong, eh?
When I arrived at Hampstead, there were some young canvassers at the station and we had a long and friendly chat. Hampstead was of course super-marginal and as I had a small amount at 4/1 on Tulip Siddiq I was keen to know what they thought. They were nervous - hopeful rather than confident. When I told them her price had shortened to about evens they cheered up immensly and wanted to know more. Somehow this didn't reassure me and I later hedged my bets. Siddiq won by 15,000.
Finally, when I arrived at my friend's house she surprised me by saying she had voted Labour (by post). 'I thought you hated Corbyn', I said. 'Yes' she replied 'but I hate Theresa May more.' Since I didn't share her antipathy, I shrugged this off as a quirky explanation.
All straws in the wind. All very confusing. We weren't the only people to get it wrong. We were in very good company. My own predominant feeling is that a lot of the kids made the effort to get out and vote, motivated perhaps by regret at the Brexit outcome. A lot of remainers may have done the same.
I expect however that political analysts will still be studying this election result for many years to come.
(Sorry, that was meant to be brief.)
Simply not true. It is MUCH warmer now. We are in uncharted territory.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
My scepticism, such as it is, is that this effect has taken place in a very complex system where there are a large number of counter balancing effects including the output of the sun, volcanic activity and the ability of the system to compensate (increased CO2 should stimulate plant growth for example).
I think assuming that the system will cope is foolish and an unnecessary risk. I find the argument that there may well be a step changes where the system becomes unbalanced very credible. It makes sense to proceed with renewable energy both for global warming reasons and to improve the quality of air we breath. It makes no sense to keep our economy reliant on a finite resource. It makes sense to be more efficient in the use of energy. It makes sense to reduce a risk that has potentially seriously adverse effects, particularly when there are beneficial side effects.
I was a great admirer of Lawson as Chancellor and his book The View from Number 11 remains one of the best books about development of government policy I have ever read. But he is wrong about this and not just in his facts.
If there were no working medicines at all you could still have a medical profession. For most of history that's what most societies have had. Whether it's a bloke dressed up as a shaman muttering spells in a trance and giving you a lizard's eyeball to swallow, or a bloke in a white coat and stethoscope muttering an incantation ("I'll just give you something for the pain") then handing you a chalk pill, if you think it'll work it does.
There's no placebo that will replicate a hip replacement of course. But on the whole I think I like the Roman model of medicine. The Romans paid their doctor when they were well and stopped doing so if they fell ill. They only started paying again when they got better.
Now, we see a reversion to the earlier phase of capitalism where an unending supply of cheap labour can be exploited in terms of low pay forcing people to work every day to survive. Yes, you can have a day off but you'll get no money which means you won't be able to afford the rent on your tiny little room in the semi you share with a dozen other men and it'll either be living rough or having to go back to wherever with nothing.
This is where the Single Market ends up - no wonder so much of business loves it.
"The Conservative Party will never be in power again"....
Happily the only serious bet I had was a buy of Labour Seats at 160 - but that was only because I thought they were oversold and low risk at that level. I burst out laughing when the exit poll was announced.
As attested by the Met Office, even the GISTEMP temperature readings in the modern era, especially their interpolation of observational data over the polar regions, are being glossed over with a large correlation length, and hence cannot be seen as definitive.
Given the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, it would be only sensible to hedge our bets.
Your point being?
Corbyn seems to genuinely believe he won and his natural brilliance will make him PM shortly. He has looked like a less shouty, less intelligent version of Trump. True, he came close in the popular vote but Labour are below where they were in 1992 and barely ahead of 2010 in terms of seats. Yet nobody is telling Labour the hard truth that they lost and lost badly and need to do much better next time. They are lazily assuming a few more seats and a slightly less popular government will deliver them a win.
I would be surprised if the Tories picked up more votes. But I can easily foresee under these circumstances Labour's vote falling by more than theirs.
Green initiatives are not benignly limited to new sources of energy and more efficient batteries. It was green concerns that led to the dieselisation of Europe which we now know has caused thousands of deaths that petrol would not have caused. Green taxes make heating your home more expensive and have led to fuel poverty, a form of poverty re-invented by environmentalism.
One of the biggest causes of deaths in the third world is indoor air pollution, about which the green movement is all but silent because the solution is LPG.
As for the Conservatives not winning a majority again, in the foreseeable future he's right.
It was, also, worryingly, meant to be funded by money that would have been drastically reduced by their other policies.
Since the election he has said Labour will be in permanent campaign mode.
I wouldn't characterise that as lazy or complacent.
If anything it might be a bit of a waste of time- since it looks as though the next election will be a while away...
And was in front of the TV like a shot!
Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
Reducing reliance on ME o&g would be good not just for us, but probably also the local populations.
I'm sceptical about some aspects of climate change, and especially the predictions of consequences. But that doesn't mean that we can't get positives out of the situation if we're careful.
But they're not. For example, Labour have never held any part of Moray. And the Conservatives have no chance in Tredegar.
Haven't the figures to prove it, not that they were accurate anyway, but I'm pretty sure their extra spending on secondary education would outstrip total spending on universities.
It was, also, worryingly, meant to be funded by money that would have been drastically reduced by their other policies.
*** messed up quotations **** Read from here ****
I'd be quite surprised if that was the case - the figure I've seen for secondary education is 28bn total.
The increase in university spending was estimated by Labour as 11.2bn and by the IFS as 13.4bn, dropping to 8.8bn in the long-run.
Labour proposed a 1.6% real increase in funding/pupil - that surely can't equal a c. 40% increase in overall secondary budget.
For completeness - the Lib Dems proposed maintaining at current per pupil funding levels.
https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/Presentations/Rowena Crawford, 2017 General Election, manifesto analysis.pdf
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_education_spending_20.html
Sea levels have been rising secularly for a couple of hundred years at least.
Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets
Phone contracts are always invariably credit agreements too, not sure everyone realises that.
While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
(It appears this should be 40 years, instead of 20. It's still an interesting prediction).
https://twitter.com/jameschappers/status/895943537589723136
Every SNP seat listed even where the majority is as high as 15.5%. Tory up to 4.9% and Labour to 5.6%.
Lib Dem seats obviously totally invulnerable. Nothing to do with Mike Smithson's support for the Lib Dems I suppose??
It is the same as those end-of-the-world cults that carry on even when the leader was wrong and changes the date. Anthropologically it is quite interesting how religion arises in every society, no matter how advanced, in one form or another.
As for permanent campaign mode, again he is assuming there will be an election. Complacency again. Even you're acknowledging that.
I dislike Corbyn. But I am allowing for that. His performance since the election has been surprisingly inept given his sure-footed response in the campaign, and it's far too easy to see the parallels with 1992.
Is *the* solution LPG - and if so, how is "the Green movement" stopping it being employed ?
Or is it solar ?
"Green taxes make heating your home more expensive and have led to fuel poverty..."
What percentage increase in heating bills do you attribute to UK 'green taxes' - and what reduction to subsidies for insulation ? And please demonstrate that in itself has led to fuel poverty.
Or at least, if it didn't include them the figures were more of a nonsense than I thought, which is remarkable given how nonsensical they were.
Your own preferred source agrees with me re sea level.
https://skepticalscience.com/images/Sea-Level-1.gif
It's a religion. To you there are believers and there are heretics.
Trump-supporting accounts like Paul Joseph Watson and Diamond and Silk say the site is stopping them making money from their videos and hiding them from viewers. And some have said that the censorship is so bad they will be leaving YouTube entirely.
The complaints come in the middle of a controversy surrounding the Google memo, which circulated around the YouTube owner and claimed that its diversity agenda was wrong. Many prominent right-wing personalities have taken up the cause of James Damore, who wrote the memo and was subsequently fired."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/youtube-donald-trump-prison-planet-paul-joseph-watson-diamond-and-silk-a7887576.html