The Environment.
No, not the environment as such, but the fact that every news headline is dominated by further propaganda about how we're disappearing to a watery hell in a leaky handcart thanks to wicked humankind and our CO2 emitting cars belching Armageddon into the atmosphere.

Now I'm no climate scientist and my credentials in the field amount to a GCSE in Physics and a keen interest in science that's never left me since I were knee high to a grasshopper, like.

Before the hessian undergarment wearing brigade beat a self righteous path to my front door telling me that "It's a fact!" and "Climate change is proven beyond doubt!" whilst waving any number of 100% recycled leaflets under my nose, I should out myself from the closet and say that I'm a bit of an environ_mentalist myself, but with a silent "mentalist". I do give a damn about our green double standards, the ever growing sum total of our unsustainable numbers and the fact that no-one seems bothered that we're chopping down rainforests like they're going out of fashion, as indeed in many ways they have thanks to our obsession with the internal combustion engine.

Here's why I'm annoyed. I can pretty much vouch for the fact that winters ain't what they used to be, for what passes as a "big freeze" in 2008 is actually an inch of snow on the ground. When I were knee high to a grasshopper, I remember Ulrika Johnsson bragging about getting a good six inches on her front lawn the previous night and not intending it a reference to a Blue Peter Molester or a Footballer of the dogging persuasion. Climate change is a given, the world is slightly warmer than it was in 1987. Any fule kno dat innit?

So why my reticence?

Remember I said that we've yet to agree on a cause for global warming - or climate change as used to confuse the Proles unwilling to give up their Mistubishi Shoguns lest we miss out on a Mediterranean climate for Canvey Island. For starters, humankind accounts for 2% of the total carbon content of the atmosphere. That's the sum total of cars, aeroplanes, ships and even farts (more CO2 than methane, betcha didn't know that kids?) that us folk happily emit every day. Indeed, the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens chucked out the same amount of CO2 in an afternoon as humankind did between 1980 and 1990.

edit - thanks to woo woo? for unlurking to insult me for this small edit. While my statistic for Mount St Helens may well be incorrect, the fact remains that volcanism is a direct contributor of atmospheric CO2:

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002105397_volcano01m.html


"Heresay!" scream the hessian knickered harridans, gathering en masse to beat me into submission and somehow missing a couple of vital points along the way.

Our orbit round the sun ain't a perfect circle. Now this can be because the Earth is under the influence of the moon's gravity and thus adopts a path akin to a drunken celestial stagger, but there are subtler factors in play, far far beyond my simple brain to comprehend. Sometimes the arc of orbit moves us slightly closer, sometimes we're farther away.

Not only that, but our sun lacks a thermostat and doesn't pump out solar radiation at the same level every day. It's been slightly hotter in the past and slightly cooler in the past too. That's part of the mechanism which has driven our boom and bust cycle of ice ages and temperate ages which have been a feature of planet Earth for three billion years or so.

No doubt some of you are thinking that I'm a Clarksonite Neanderthal about to spout on about how it's all bollocks and to keep driving our SUVs. I'm not. I am all too aware that our fossil fuel resources are finite and that we may well have already hit peak oil.

In 1980, there were roughly four and a half billion humans on the planet. Today it's just over six and a half billion. Thirty years ago, population growth was cited as The threat to humanity. Nowadays, it's desirable for we need more people to support the folks already here in our dotage.

How do we feed, clothe and enhance the standard of living for so many people? How about the additional resources they will consume?

What about the aforementioned rainforest, being hacked down by the acre?

Yep, we're suffering from Carbon Blindness. We have diminutive Hollywood actors and Whitehouse runners up travelling the world on big Jumbo Jets telling us to burn less fuel. Britain's next Prime Minister gets on a plane and flies to Iceland to host a PR bunfight about how carbon emissions are hurting the Icelandics. The sanctimonious are having a field day.

Indeed, the Earth is expected to shortly enter a brief decade long cooling phase and (I kid you not) already environmentalists are debating how we must ensure that the public are kept aware that global warming hasn't gone away but may merely be in hiding for a decade.

The signatories to the Kyoto Treaty - especially the EC are all hammering their citizens car usage with a raft of taxes in an effort to stem the Carbon Torrent. However, because air travel isn't counted as part of the statistics, the Kyoto nations are building new runways by the dozen.

Here in the UK, the government has relived the British motoring public of £40bn this last year in motoring taxes. How much revenue from those taxes have been invested in "Green Initiatives"?

Less than 0.05%.

One wonders how many homes could be cavity wall insulated with forty billion pounds of tax revenue?

We'll continue to hack down trees to plant Biofuel crops, build more and more runways and sell more Boeing 747s because it doesn't officially count.

Britain will continue to have the most expensive and poorly performing Public Transport in Europe.

Motoring taxes will escalate further and further in a self-fulfilling spiral of the need for more punitive taxes and the lack of alternatives.

Boeing 747s will continue to burn more fuel in one hop across the Atlantic ocean than your Ford Mondeo will in 128 years. But it's okay, because it doesn't count. And that's official.

And so we'll self righteously continue onwards, blissfully aware that the environment is the biggest threat to civilisation since the H Bomb (funny how that's disappeared from the public consciousness, no?), with our government that cares for us making sure we pay taxes to cover the costs, while at the same time buying "Carbon Credits" from the third world, giving third world regimes cash to buy our goods and services. Global Warming/Climate Change was not on the political agenda until someone discovered a way of making money out of it. The world may get warmer and the seas may well rise, but the governments of Europe will be too busy spending our taxes to notice.

Meanwhile, South Africa will begin culling Elephants again, Japan and Norway will go on harpooning Minke Whales and more and more PCBs will be poured into the seas around Svalbard. Floridian Manatees will continue to be chopped up by marine propellers, Congolese bushmeat poachers will continue to hunt mountain Gorillas.

Meanwhile, our governments will be busily wondering what they'll tax next once we've all given up our cars.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Tue 6 May 2008, 20:20, 10 replies)

It's difficult to know who to believe..
We get so much conflicting information. The problem is lack of consistency. It makes the man on the street throw his hands up and think fuck it, I'll just keep on living the way I've always lived until the scientists and politicians decide once and for all the truth of the matter.
( girlinthehole, Tue 6 May 2008, 20:35, closed)

What needs to happen right..
is that the European Union need to get together and start taxing air fuel. We can't do it on our own, as no bugger will use our airports anymore, so it needs to be a group decision. Until that happens, it will remain cheaper to fly from London to Edinburgh than go by any other form of transport.
( Madam Marlboro wonders if you've found her yet, Tue 6 May 2008, 20:49, closed)

it's like this...
It's not taxes which change behaviour, it's legislation.

It was 1970s US Government legislation which led to the airbag being pretty much mandatory these days, saving countless lives.

If Gordon were to force through a law tomorrow that all cars sold in the UK as of 2010 must emit less than 150g/km of CO2 then the car manufacturers would be forced to deal with it. Fuel consumption in the UK would have to fall ergo fewer carbon tonnes in the atmosphere.

However there's a flaw in that plan under scrutiny, tax revenues would also fall. Gordon would have to find some other captive audience to fund the Health and Safety/CCTV Utopia he wants.

You think the UK is carbon friendly? Notice how all the so called "traffic calming" schemes of the 1990s have bottlenecked stop/start traffic, which is about as environmentally unfriendly as road travel gets. Heathrow gets a new terminal, Stansted gets a new runway to cater for the latest generation of super Jumbo Jets burning tens of tons of fuel at a time.

Meanwhile, legislation exists in Britain today to prevent bus and train companies offering an integrated timetable.

It's deliberate policy to force tax revenues up. It's no longer about the environment or saving the planet, it's about making a quick buck from a captive audience. As long as public transport (rapidly escalating in cost) remains shoddy, people will have to drive and the greedy government gets its' fill.

Meanwhile, more and more "green" propaganda is forced down our throats to play on our guilt.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Tue 6 May 2008, 22:40, closed)

.
A *click* for modernising Molesworth.
( Duke Of Belmsford has got 99 records, but Jay-Z ain't one, Wed 7 May 2008, 6:52, closed)

Hmm, partly agree
In fact, I agree entirely with your perception of the tax issues, but I have to say that global warming is almost certainly being exacerbated by humankind.

Yes, the earth is in a warming cycle because of factors such as increased solar output and so on. In fact, we're actually coming out of an ice age. But if you look at the rate of temperature increase over the last 200 years, and compare this with models constructed from ice core data and the like over the last millions of years, the temperature is now increasing at an unprecedented rate.

This coincides with a rapid increase in atmospheric CO₂ content and is enough to convince most scientists (me included) that anthropogenic global warming is real.

However, on just what the consequences of that will be, the jury is still out.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 7 May 2008, 8:42, closed)

'Threat to Human Civilisation Round Three Ding Ding'
Sanctimonious Guardian reading enviro-saints buying a Prius to collect their spawn from school while wearing jute pants will do the sum total of jack shit.

There are a sod of a lot of people on the planet, all of whom have aspirations for a better standard of living. There are finite resources. This is the classic boom/bust relationship seen in predator/prey population dynamics applied to humanity.

Historically, this leads to one of two things: war or famine. You have a situation where we've all forgotten about living 4 minutes away from nuclear vapourisation, as it might take up precious brain-space currently used for soap 'plots'. Pity that there are still plenty of weapons knocking around, in the charge of increasingly nationalistic and macho people (Hi Vlad, like the tie) who also happen to control an awfully large chunk of increasingly scarce resources.

Quick, the environment!

Or the fact that the very scenario that NATO spent so much time collectively cacking themselves over (Third Shock Army rolling West in a bangy shooty fashion) could well be replaced by the PLA 23rd Shock Army doing the very same thing.

Quick, the environment! A vole has got a cough!

The almost complete melt-down of sub-Saharan Africa into a puddle of corruption, suicidal public health programmes, looting of yet more resources and irritatingly smug pop 'stars' preaching at us.

Quick, the environment! Build a solar panel!

The increasingly likely carve-up of the USA into separate Asian / Hispanic / The Rest states. Demographics and all that, but please ensure that you keep that scary cow Clinton in a secure bunker. Muzzled.

Quick, the environment! Buy a bag for life!

The environment will do just fine. It's capacity to support squillions of people who all have a car, plenty to eat, education and 'ooman rights will not. Some species will die out, others will exploit new niches, the world will keep turning as it always has (good thing too as I think we've fucked the warranty). However, the increasing hordes of humanity will be faced with a smaller cake, and everyone will want their slice to be bigger than everyone else's.

Back to the old rule. War or Famine.

And on a final comforting thought, guess which G8 country currently is a net importer of food and energy resources, is reliant on sea transport (especially if we run out of jet fuel), yet has either sold or 'mothballed' so much of it's Navy that it could neither protect it's own trade routes nor defend it's own shores without help from Uncle Sam or (crucially) the EU?

Thanks, Gordon. Thanks Tony.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Wed 7 May 2008, 11:13, closed)

so I only read up to Mt St Helens
but that is when I decided you're an idiot.

volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp6/question1375.html

the information here is referenced and written by someone with more than a Physics GCSE.

So to stay on topic, I hate people who spout what is pretty much lies as fact. Especially since everyone has the web and it is pretty easy to verify things from several sources.
(woo who?, Wed 7 May 2008, 12:58, closed)

^ Point made but in an unnecessarily cuntish fashion
The stats of volcanism are intriguing, Mount St Helens continues to parp between 50 and 250 tonnes of CO2 into the air every day in it's inactive state, compared with Oregon's 127 tonnes of CO2 per day generated from industry.

However there are other factors in play, like Methane, "a by product of natural low oxygen environments" (ie swamps, intensive rice farming, cattle farming) which is 25x more potent than CO2. Not to mention of course, water vaopur and ozone iself which are all highly effective greenhouse gasses.

However, the poster above misses my point - that instead of addressing issues like overpopulation and destruction of the planets means of removing atmospheric carbon dioxide - you've heard of the carbon cycle? - we're concentrating solely on bludgeoning the motorist to pay for the damage. It's so short sighted it makes me mad, as while we're not investing enough public money in public transport. Moreover, air travel - the fastest growing source of manmade CO2 emission - is allowed to grow unabated.

The fact remains that our sights are centered on one small facet of climate change (which I didn't deny), while trying to make a lot of money out of it.

Anyone else think I'm an idiot for finding that obscene?
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Wed 7 May 2008, 14:43, closed)

Our effect on environmental change put into context of the history of the world
www.amazon.com/Something-New-Under-Environmental-Twentieth-Century/dp/0393321835

Based on proper science 'n stuff.
( djtrialprice, Wed 7 May 2008, 15:27, closed)

Q: What's the most environmentally-damaging thing in this list:
Flying frequently, driving a 4x4, having a child, clubbing baby seals.

A: The child.
(Musuko, Wed 7 May 2008, 16:05, closed)