It's all over but for the sweating?

[NeilBlanchard]

The Iron Lady's Strong Stance On Climate Change | ThinkProgress

[freebeard]

Well, Rest In Peace

We just lost Annette Funicello, too.

[freebeard]

Arragonis -- Interesting story. It was built upriver from Horseshoe Bend?

It reminds me of Howard Hughes Spruce Goose making its way upriver to McMinnville, OR, USofA.

Hmmm, steel-hulled propeller driven ship, Birch-hulled propeller driven airplane?

[Arragonis]

Sometimes in science you have to think beyond the idea of current ideas and ponder the ethics behind the research. This is the kind of thought that troubled Oppenheimer until his death - that he had invented the perfect way to end the world, he battled it until he died.

So lets imagine you are a scientist and you have a one-in-a-million chance to make a real difference to the world. You could maybe map the human genome. You could possibly map it and make it available to the world so that science as a whole moves on, or you could choose to try and map it in a closed way and exploit it for cash.

Remember folks this is you - your fundamental structure.

In the latter corner (i.e. those who like to exploit this stuff) may I present...

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

What does Craig Venter say about anthropogenic climate change?

Thankfully this excersize was rendered non-exclusive by the intervention of the Wellcome foundation (a charity) which progressed on the same course just enough ahead of Celera to make the sequencing "open source". That final announcement was not the one the scientist above wanted to make.

Maybe the key scientists in the original list need editing.

[Arragonis]

Baroness Thatcher has died.

I never agreed with her politics but unlike others "of the left" I am willing to note and even in some way mourn the passing of a significant political figure here in the UK - she is certainly way above the empty grey suits we have in power and opposition now.

I have no problem with her receiving a full state funeral - I can disagree with someone but still respect them and their impact all the same.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

The Iron Lady's Strong Stance On Climate Change | ThinkProgress

Her stance was not all climate based, she also wanted the UK to move away from coal as a primary power source so as to remove the power of the coal mining unions. After the defeat of the unions in the 84/85 strike she could have restarted mining just fine.

As it is we sit as a fuel starved nation sitting on top of a load of un-mined coal.

One other thing she opposed, the EU, has said we can no longer burn coal for energy. I suspect she would tell them to "Eff Off" and continue anyway, but we don't because we don't have her any more.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Arragonis -- Interesting story. It was built upriver from Horseshoe Bend?

Hmmm, steel-hulled propeller driven ship, Birch-hulled propeller driven airplane?

Its been a while since I watched the documentary about where it was built and where it was put at the end. I was most impressed as these guys did all of this more or less with 70s tech - bulldozers, men with chains, men with welders and so on.

The Spruce Goose has been an on and off fascination for me - you can see immediately why it would be a failure - too big. There have been a few others, try this one which was developed alongside the DH Comet - the first Jet Airliner (with serious design flaws).

At the same time they made the Brabazon...

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Her stance was not all climate based, she also wanted the UK to move away from coal as a primary power source so as to remove the power of the coal mining unions. After the defeat of the unions in the 84/85 strike she could have restarted mining just fine.

Sure, just as breaking the power of the oil companies would be a pleasant side effect of moving away from petroleum.

As it is we sit as a fuel starved nation sitting on top of a load of un-mined coal.

Yes, so fuel-starved that every month millions of Britons can afford to travel to other countries: Britons spend more abroad - Telegraph Where do British people go on their holidays?

PS: And so fuel-starved, it can waste untold amounts of electricity on outdoor lighting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...new-light.html

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Yes, so fuel-starved that every month millions of Britons can afford to travel to other countries...

Its like Déjà vu all over again.

Don't panic, but UK faces BLACKOUTS BY 2015 ? The Register

The UK risks energy shortages by 2015 or 2016, energy regulator Ofgem has predicted. The shortages will primarily be caused by EU environmental legislation forcing the early closure of coal and oil-fired power stations, it said.

(not much oil fired capacity these days though)

Originally Posted by jamesqf

PS: And so fuel-starved, it can waste untold amounts of electricity on outdoor lighting...

The street lighting here is great - its one of the main things I miss when I have to venture overseas. Its a safety item for us and not a waste. And thankfully most if not all of it stayed on during the anti-progress madness of "Earth Hour". There have been money saving moves to shut it off during the early hours but the police have noted rising crime stats and/or accident rates when they do.

[Arragonis]

More on Thatcher, climate change skeptic

Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming…

She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988…

It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.

She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.

In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology.

[NeilBlanchard]

Freeman Dyson accepts anthropogenic climate change.

Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia