00:33

Global warming - should we welcome it?

Global warming is a bad thing. Or is it? Compared to the status quo – which is all we have to compare things with - it would seem to be fraught with problems.

But the status quo is not an option, because the climate is always changing if you think in thousands, rather than tens of years, and very recently – only twelve thousand  years ago  - it was very cold indeed with ice-sheets covering the UK. Most of Europe had a climate not dissimilar to Greenland today.  This was preceded by a warm phase that was in turn preceded by another ice age. If this pattern of oscillation between hot and cold is a regular one then we should now be looking down the barrel of a cold phase that would leave most of the world outside the tropics marginal if not uninhabitable.

What has stopped this happening? Well it looks as if might well be the man-made carbon emissions that started with the widespread introduction of agriculture and which has dramatically accelerated since industrialization and the global burning of fossil fuels. It is probably this warming that has prevented another Ice Age.

Is that such a bad thing?
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23:23

Israel - then and now

Israel - then and now
Every day seems to bring yet another story of Israeli persecution of the Palestinians. Any criticism is met by accusations of anti-Semitism ...
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16:14

Mr Orme's Parrot

Mr Orme's Parrot
When I am in London I stay in Orme Court which is next to Queensway - just off the Bayswater Road. It's not famous for much except the O...
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11:23

HS2

HS2
Apparently the new high speed link between London and Birmingham will take half an hour off he current journey. The cost is a scar through s...
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21:08

Peecrastinating

Peecrastinating
I have invented a new word: Peecrastinate    Verb: to irrationally put off getting out of bed for a pee when you wake up in the middle of th...
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15:55

Hedgerows and hedgetrimmers

Hedgerows and hedgetrimmers
Where I live in Somerset it is dairy country – small fields and hedgerows interspersed with woods many of which are recently planted. Lookin...
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15:49

Overpriced houses

Overpriced houses
We live in rural Somerset. Bristol is an hour’s drive away, as is Bournmouth; Yeovil, hardly an economic powerhouse, is the closest town of ...
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