Time for us to go green? - Junes Editors column uploaded...hold on tight.

[Jack]

Folks - this months column, like the other is open for debate.......have a read :whistle: :whistle: :angel:

 

 

 

[YK55]

I fully agree with you :tup: The whole global warming issue is now a runaway monster and too many people are making big money from it. Did you see the Channel 4 programme that was on a few weeks ago? (The Great Global-Warming Swindle) A lot of eminent people are now dis-associating themselves from the whole 'man-made co2 emissions are causing an environmental catastrophe' concept. The amount mankind produces is a tiny fraction compared to naturally occurring co2. If every single vehicle in the world was scrapped tomorrow how much less co2 would be produced? I belive it would be around 0.01 % :dunno:

[YK55]

and another thing :banghead:

 

The data that Al Gore was using was falsified. The actual data showed that increased global co2 levels were the result of global-warming and NOT the cause. Climate change is natural, we have to accept that and work out how to deal with it rather than playing at King Canute.

[Jessie The Jeep]

I'm about to head off to the Weardale Wartime weekend in the Jeep, now towing a fully laden trailer. This will no doubt increase my fuel consumption, so I'll be adding my 0.000000000000000000000000001% contribution of CO2.

 

If it gets real hot over the weekend, thank me for your suntan!

 

Steve

[Mrs Hardyferret]

:tup: I agree whole heartedly with your view Jack.

Aren't we in general green enough with the amount of recycling we do - vehicles, parts, kit etc :dunno:

[YK55]

Channel 4 programme link here :-

 

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/

[Markheliops]

I'm all for the going green thing -

 

I wouldn't have my Ward any other colour - just wouldn't look right would it. :-D

 

Seriously though - I think it's a matter of people not really understanding how the earth works.

 

The earth will get hotter over a period of time and then cool down. I also think the Government has made this a massive issue and oh my - just look at the extra money it brings in for this tax and that tax - all in the name of saving the earth - cobblers!

[Degsy]

Spot on Jack, this is definitely a political con in order to squeeze us even more. The earth has been warming up and cooling down over millions of years and this is merely another chapter in it's evolution. The sooner we get rid of this totally corrupt administration the better.

[Bodge Deep]

I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments there Jack.

Living in the middle of the Lake District in a very beautiful and unspoilt area I'm always infuriated by the 'holier than thou' attitude of many of the visitors to the area.

I have to drive the Dodge down some fairly narrow lanes to and from my storage and and consistently get the angry glare, arm waving or even the odd bit of abuse about 4x4's & greenlaning from the sunday stroller...

Which is a laugh as

A it won't fit down narrow paths and

B with no rollcage it'd be suicide to offroad it... which I don't anyway

 

These people seem to forget that they, in the most part, have driven a great distance... in order to walk a minescule distance (in comparison to total distance covered) in order to feel at one with nature!

(ie drive 70 miles... to go for a nice 5 mile stroll somewhere pretty & quiet For Forks Sake!)

 

I also enjoy telling people that it (the truck) contains virtually no plastic, runs on unleaded fuel, is maintained almost completely using recycled parts, is only used very infrequently and during its working life, has probably done the work of 4 or 5 other vehicles... which it has subsequently outlived!

 

The argument against them is purely because they are conspicuous ... like the plastic 4x4 "Chelsea Tractors"

Ignore the naysayers and CO2'ers... for they know not of what they speak

 

As an aside...

I often wonder how environmentally responsible and green a Taiwanese bicycle factory is...? (not including the container ship that brought it across)

& have you ever noticed how the 'pedal nazis' always seem to ride very expensive handbuilt imported bikes? Hmm :dunno:

If i want a new bike... I got to the tip... never more than 3 or 4 quid for a good un and it is the ultimate and literal example of re-cycling!!

 

here endeth the lesson :angel:

[Enigma]

Rising CO2 and Mankind.

Well, logically reasoned it makes sense;

 

We basically burned or removed all trees. (wasn't most of Europe woods?).

Trees bind CO2, trees gone, CO2 in atmosphere.

 

Besides that we also burned enormous amounts of plants and trees from millions of years ago (oil, coal, gas).

Guess you don't need to be a bigshot scientist to understand it.

 

But nowadays its economical a good idea to jump on the Environment train, in the past you'd be a treehugger. Now its getting big buissiness.

Offcourse Cars are a ideal milkcow....

 

O yeah, for most of you (Brits) rising sealevels is a nuisance...we in the Netherlands stand to loose half our country.

We damn near got flooded in 1995 when the riversdikes were about to burst. I (and family) had to evacuate....queation of time till we swim. Our area is designated to flood if things get out of hand - nice..

We drown from sea water of riverwater. Now where is mu dinghy???

[ArtistsRifles]

Gets my vote Jack. This "enviro-friendly" ploy on the part of the politico's really pee's me off as it is just another poorly disguised means of taxing the populace to pay the politico's salaries.

 

One of the "bright young things" at work presumed to lecture me about the un-green nature of little Maud and how I was destroying the environment - unlike him in his Prius Hybrid Daddy had bought him. So he was sat down and had the true facts of life explained to him - like how the mines that produce the metals for the hybrids batteries have killed the earth for miles around so nothing will ever grow or live there again. Or the disposal problems with these batteries when they reach the end of the 3 or 5 year life cycles.....

[Richard Notton]

The amount mankind produces is a tiny fraction compared to naturally occurring co2. If every single vehicle in the world was scrapped tomorrow how much less co2 would be produced? I belive it would be around 0.01 % :dunno:

 

Forget the vehicles; if mankind and all its trappings were scrapped tomorrow the CO2 drop would be. . . . . . . . . . .

 

 

 

0.0015%pa.

[Richard Notton]

Well, you have me wound up now Jack. . . . . . . . .

 

Its encouraging to see that the "eccentrics" doing odd things like operating old army trucks are not easily fooled like the rest of the sheep we seem to have for a population.

 

The whole thing has clearly been shown to be the biggest heap of BLX (capital B and two L's if Jacks naughty word filter would allow) imaginable having been cynically used by Dame Thatcher to justify the building of nuclear power stations and then the rest of the world's fashionable greenies and do-gooders hopped on the bandwagon followed by the "consultant" industry seeing a good profit opportunity. By this time the govt also saw a huge tax revenue opportunity too, both from the new industry and the private person and it behoves them to keep or increase the momentum, so here we are.

 

For those of us that have a life beyond the pub on Friday and football on Saturday it is plainly obvious that the world is, was and will be driven by the sun and if we want to talk of greenhouse gasses then CO2 falls a very poor second indeed to water vapour, perhaps the exceedingly vocal environmentalists and the rest of the CO2 industry should look at providing a sun screen over the world's oceans, closing all power stations and their huge cooling towers, making all cooking illegal and stopping mankind from breathing.

 

We'd be a bit short of rain though.

 

Clearly, many of the world renown scientists saw through the façade after the first meetings but some had to resort to the courts to have their names removed from the wholly flawed shock/horror papers, plus the founding father of Greenpeace resigned over the issue for the same reasons.

 

It is supreme arrogance to think the insignificantly puny efforts of mankind have any effect on the natural global systems being powered by the sun and as has been stated, just one volcanic eruption, a totally natural event, has millions of times more effect in a few days than man has ever, or will likely, achieve. These pustules on the face of the planet are relatively common and will erupt liquid rock and ash with the force of several terra-horsepower of their own accord.

 

We should bear in mind that government is staffed with weasel-word engineers chosen for loyalty, gender or race in various measures, they generally have no formal qualifications in any of their technical areas of "responsibility" and do massage and/or ignore scientific input as it suits them and their agenda. Of note that the really important fiscal matters are now, correctly, handled by The Bank of England who do know what they're doing but then of late Parliament has voted to make everyone else open with freedom of information except themselves.

 

There must be a few old farts around these parts that can remember; the environmental scare-mongering is nothing new, we had it in 1974 using up tons of newsprint and hours of largely B&W TV, behold the coming of the second Ice Age about now. We're still waiting.

 

Remember how we were all being destroyed by "leaded" fuel, dreadful stuff that is destroying our children's brains they said, quite right too lead does that. Tetra-ethyl lead as a chemical compound doesn't though and when converted to lead oxide (abrasive jewellers' rouge) and immediately catalysed by the necessary chlorine or bromine in the combustion process simply forms a water soluble lead halide that washes out of the environment, cannot be taken up in the food chain and doesn't get into anyone's brain. You probably didn't know this, no matter, no reason to be told having swallowed the Govt line.

 

But wait, let's make catalytic converters a legal requirement, we can tax those through the increased vehicle costs and as they catalyse stuff to CO2 we can tax that too, brilliant.

 

Of course the only spec for catalysers was the Californian model, and this requires a start soak of 20ºC min for 2 hours. You may have noticed that England is a bit different from CA and so for 6 months of the year, like winter, your cat is doing nothing whilst crawling in jams; well, not really nothing but wasting some 8% of the engine output. Its not a problem as the extra fuel used means more tax. Ever wondered why your garage man advises thrashing the car immediately before the MoT and then runs it for some time in a warm garage before doing the exhaust sniffer test?

 

Jack's quite right and he's a better writerist than I too, don't even worry about using the stuff up, refined fuel is still second only to water for quantity and we can always cover more of the country with the yellow flowering oil seed rape that does my nose in and grow fuel if we have to. I have one MV friend in Kazakhstan as they're making holes in the Caspian Sea for oil and another at Fawley where not only are they making it faster than the pipe can get it to Heathrow but sending 300,000 tons of refined US spec petrol a week to the Yanks who are short of 6 refineries after the hurricanes.

 

But, I can be as cynical and crafty as the esteemed Govt, the two of us have an escape plan funded by taking all our pension from the parsimonious institutions and doing it ourselves, bit of extra work but better than the 7% institutional profit (they pocket everything over that) when you can have whatever you can make and currently that's 42%pa, about 2½ years and we're off to 300 days of sunshine a year, 5% income tax, petrol at £2 a gallon, council tax of £50pa and baccy ¼ the price; only 4hrs flying away too.

 

The point is, that one area of excellent returns is the great edifice of the CO2 industry, if the world is silly enough to generate such a profit making business then I'll have some of it, thank you very much, keep supporting the myth.

 

Hey, its my birthday on Tuesday, one step closer.

 

Thanks Jack, I got up far too early for a Sunday with nothing to do, time for the 4th mug of tea and ciggy I think; then I'll turn my big and dozy black cat upside down and give her a good tummy tickling, always feel better after that.

 

 

 

[Guest shane taylor]

I must say that this is an awesome thread and this is what an editors column should be about, provoking debate.

 

Richard, an amazing reply and everything that everybody has said so far is so true. I too think that it would be a disastrous move if our movement decided to go green. Once we declare ourselves carbon credit friendly then we have just shot ourselves in the foot and played into the hands of the government as by default, we are admitting that we are causing trouble. It is a loaded question, bit like the 'are you still beating your wife' question. Seems to me that as a society we are always so eager to roll over and appease anyone that accuses us of something.

 

To pick up on something Bodge Deep said about his Dodge being over 60 years and still going - surely this one of the best examples of , repair, reuse and recycle.....and this is after it has played its part in a world war?! I had to laugh when Tony Blair was asked would he stop is foreign holidays....his answer 'no of course not, why should I' strange answer coming from a world leader who is leading the way on the global stage of saving the planet........how is taxing me going to make the slightest bit of difference to what China is pumping out????

 

Or how is charging me by how much rubbish I throw out going to change the fact that we still don't know how many Russian nuclear subs are rotting away on the sea bed with their reactors still in tacked??

[Great War truck]

Quite right!

 

Jack. How do you feel about recycling then (bottles, cans and newspaper - not green machines)?

 

Tim (too)

[Jack]

Quite right!

 

Jack. How do you feel about recycling then (bottles, cans and newspaper - not green machines)?

 

Tim (too)

 

 

Hi Tim

 

Personally I/we/the family have always recycled. We have always lead a low impact where of life. We raise and butcher our own animals, my wife can skin, gut and joint a lamb within seconds. She also tans the skins. My background has always been land based and I spent over tens years working our ancient woodlands before I went into the office - I now own and manage an import business - rather a huge mind shift. Most of our portfolio is sourced from North American but of late my focus is moving towards the Far East.

 

I am guilty of many things and one of them is being responsible for depleting the worlds resources. Am I happy about that? Well no, coming from my background, I am not but I am honest about it and will do what I can to contribute to a better planet. My company belongs to a movement that is called 1% For the Planet - http://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/ we give 1% of our sales to environmental bodies/groups of our choice - bear in mind that this is 1% of sale, not profit so for every £100,000 of turnover we donate £1000. That is real money out of our 'back pocket'. I was determined that we were going to put our money where our money is - I revolt at the lip service that others give to environment, carbon credits this and carbon sinks that - all complete nonsense and doesn't cost the companies much but looks to be 'on message' and 'in touch'. The private sector has to lead the way on this........

 

We have to be grown up enough to realise that we can't keep digging holes and then fill it with landfill - we have to recycle so we don't run out of raw material. It just makes sense and it was how we used to live pre war?! Our culture was more efficient then. What we have to be fully aware of is pollution to our watercourses and how we must make sure that these are as healthy as we can get them - they are the arteries of life.

[Mark]

Stop cutting down the rain forest would help :dunno:

[Great War truck]

Very nicely put Jack. My hat goes off to you.

 

I try to recycle as much as i can. Many reasons, but also because my house is next to a recently abandoned quarry and i am concerned that it will become land fill if i do not. Luckily there are some Peregrine falcons nesting on the cliff face and they are not allowed to disturb them. Beautiful birds too. I watched one snatch a pigeon out of the sky a little while back. Not seen that before.

 

I do think that this exporting plastic rubbish back to China is a good idea though. We should do the same thing with nuclear waste, asbestos and di-oxins. They seem to make everything these days, so it is about time they cleaned up the mess. But i expect at some stage in the distant future, some Chinese lawyer will take us to court for harming their nations health.

 

Near my US relations (outside Chicago) they have taken all of the waste from the city and built a range of hills. Capped them and now use them for skiing in an otherwise flat part of the country. Any part of the UK need a new mountain range? Parts of Somerset are quite flat.

 

It wont happen in my lifetime, but i wonder how our descendants will cope with a lack of resources, such as copper, tin, iron, oil, coal etc, etc. Maybe by that time we will be making everything out of soya beans and rape seed oil. I can feel my allergies coming on just thinking about it.

 

With this whole going green thing, burn less fuel, use less electricity, i do think that we are missing the big picture. Global warming is going to happen whatever we do, so perhaps we should be preparing for it. We should be building another (taller) Thames barrier, buying Enigma a small boat, designing garden fences that dont blow down (like weebles), useful things like that.

 

I was convinced (by various lunatics) that the world was going to be destroyed by a nuclear war in the 1980's. That has always left me feeling quite pleased and slightly suprised that it was not. Following that were threats of AIDS, BSE, SARS, Bird flu and some revolting disease who's name i cant remember. Seems that we have mostly survived those as well, so i cant really take the threat from global warming that seriously.

 

Now where did i leave my fiddle?

 

Tim (too)

[capital]

Agree with a lot on the front page but think we have to be pro active or at least seen to be pro active. We have just got a new Minister for the Environament here (Ireland)(Green Party), and are worried how things are going to go. Dont think being aggressive is going to solve our problem.

[ArtistsRifles]

When I was a kid (scary thought I know) we had one dustbin and one pig bin for the slops etc. shoping came from the local high street and there was very little waste - only time our bin ever got anywhere near full was around Xmas. Paper normally was burnt on the fire so was cardboard so only thins etc. went in the bin. Once a week the council emptied the bins and once a week they emptied the pig bins,

 

Now we get all our stuff from hypermarkets, it's normally all processed and packed in plastic wrapping. Might get the odd tin still. We no longer have dustbins but have to use plastic sacks and a weeks rubbish will take 6 or 7 of these. The pig bins were discontinued years ago (do we still have pig farmers left in the UK??) so any slops have to go in the waste bags too. No longer have a fire to burn the waste paper and cardboard on as it's al central heating. The local councils concessions towards recycling are to give us orange plastic bags for paper (which go in the same Revvo-Pack as the black crap sacks) and to provide glass/bottle banks inconvenient distances from home.

 

Maybe there is a case for making shops/suppliers revert to the old style packaging of paper and card - at least that can be collected and burnt in power stations etc......

And for compelling councils to make recycling easier for their residents....

[Jack]

Did you know that farmed animals produce more greenhouse gas emissions (18%) than the worlds entire transport system (13.5%)? Or that nitrous oxide from animal manure is around 300 times as damaging to the climate as carbon dioxide? Or that methane (cow and sheep farts/burps to you and me) has 23 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide?

 

Source - Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations 2006.

[Marmite!!]

Or that methane (cow and sheep farts/burps to you and me) has 23 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide?

 

 

 

So have they got to be fitted with catalytic converters :dunno:

[Tony B]

Global warming is somewhat like obesity, 1/3 of the world spending millions on losing weight, while the other 2/3 starve. As I heard a scientist mention recently.'If you want to get funding for anything, you have to say its to prevent global warming'.

 

Advice for a long life : Don't eat anything, don't drink anything and above all don't breathe the air.