15 January 2010
19:4537752The big question is this: Seeing as we have just had some of the worst snowfall for many years (since the 1960s or 1970s according to some reports) followed by a very cold spell, where does this leave the matter of "global warming"? If we are so close to the edge of destruction with global warming - note that word "warming" in there - how come it's getting so cold?
I would like to propose an alternative theory. The earth is headed for a new ice age, and the activity of human industry and fossil fuel consumption, which is causing global warming, is actually preventing the ice age from happening. Rather than cutting down on flights, petrol consumption, and reducing our carbon footprint, we should actually increase all of this activity in a big way so that we don't all freeze to death in a global icy coffin. I'm just off to burn a load of old tyres while I run my petrol generator in the background to play the radio, and I won't feel guilty about it. Instead, I'll be happy knowing that we may actually get an inch or so less snow next year!
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
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15 January 2010
19:5737757Environment change isn`t an overnight happening Rick. In geological time it can be quick, but in the human lifetime, no. There are things happening to our planet for all to see, but as I said on another post, there are opportunist`s ready to take advantage of the uninformed. I always suggest people read from books and magazine`s from recognised scientific author`s and scientist`s who can give the best idea`s possible with what current information and evidence they`ve got.
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15 January 2010
20:0437759(Pssssst..... My tongue was in my cheek there Colin)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
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15 January 2010
20:1137763glad you posted that last bit rick, i was just about to do my bit by burning down the nearest orphanage.
not a big thing, but every little helps.
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15 January 2010
20:1337764Just to add Rick, what few people don`t realise is, we`re still in an ice age as the North and South pole testify to. Always interesting subjects these mate.
Howard, that bronze age boat would burn better than an orphanage. Nice bit of well seasoned wood there.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
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15 January 2010
20:3237771i shall be there first thing in the morning colin, after all admission is free to all residents of the dover district council area.
15 January 2010
20:5337778I suggest we remember the difference bteween climate and weather.
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
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15 January 2010
20:5837779Yes Bern, a big time scale difference.
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Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
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16 January 2010
09:2237843Many people have appeared on TV recently about weather and climate and they have all said our climate is getting warmer and these severe cold spells make no difference at all.
I don't have a problem agreeing with the fact we are getting warmer, where I do have conflict, is the major cause and I believe the major cause is cyclical, not mainly man-made.
Roger
Guest 651- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
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16 January 2010
11:4037865You watch some programmes and they say than an ice age could happen over a space as small as 10 years !!
Been nice knowing you :)
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
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16 January 2010
11:5637867You`re right Paul, and exactly the reason I no longer even watch science programmes on the box. Too much speculation, too much hype, by programme makers who don`t care whether it`s factual or not, just so long as it attracts the uninformed, general viewer. I still have many documentaries I taped from the 1990s, early 2000s from the BBC and channel 4, and the more I viewed them, the more I saw through them, of just how much crap is put into them.
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21 January 2010
17:1038443BBC2 Horizon done an episode on the Snowball Earth subject some years back, which drew my attention to a possible climatic catastrophe in the past. I was in Dover library last week, and came across this book. I only read bits of it, but when I got home, I went onto Ebay and bought a copy. The author, Gabrielle Walker is an acknowledged science writer with a PhD from Cambridge University in Natural science. An interesting read. Check it out in the library.
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Guest 644- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
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22 January 2010
03:4338475It is interesting to speculate that prior to the final phase of the early global glaciation around the 635 million years mark, the most complex form of life is believed to have been eukaryotic cells. Yet forward a 100 million and we have one of our first complex life fossil assemblages, that of the Russian 'small shelly' Tommotian fauna.
One wonders if the melting of the iceball and oxygenation of the waters led to a springboard of evolutionary innovation and the emergence of multicellular life. Our early fossil assemblages are just snapshots, sparce and rare. But it is clear that by the time of the mid Cambrian, the basic body plans of the current lineages of multicellular organisms were set and basically familiar to us today.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
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22 January 2010
13:0138486if only it were that simple phil!!!
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
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22 January 2010
16:3338494Great stuff Phil. I have some good books on the shelf covering the Cambrian explosion, as well as the transition from the prokaryotes to the eukaryotic cell, a truly long journey, but they made it, as we`re here now.
Howard. It does look simple, while at the same time complex, but once life got going, apart from the risks of asteroid bombardment, there was no stopping it. And no designer needed.
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23 January 2010
05:1738563Glad you mentioned the Cambrian explosion Colin. To me what happened in the murky world of the early invertebrates is so much more fascinating than that of the much more glamorous dinosaurs.
I assume you've read Stephen J Gould's treatise on the mid-Cambrian Burgess Shale fauna "Wonderful Life"? If not, I can highly recommend it - it was one of those, literally, life changing books I read as it opened a whole world of evolutionary theory in an area that was utterly unfamiliar to me. If you go for it, you must follow up with Simon Conway Morris's reply "The Crucible of Creation" a it tempers many of Gould's more outlandish theories.
If neither appeal, go for Richard Fortey's "Trilobite". A wonderful popularist book, it'll make you want to hunting for prehistoric marine woodlouse tomorrow.
(I have a fossil of an Anomalocaris 'puke' if anyone wants to see it.)
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
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23 January 2010
10:4038569Thanks Phil. I`ve seen Gould`s `Wonderful Life` book mentioned a number of times, but I`ve never bought it, as I`ve got so much on other stuff, but I`ve only recently really got going on evolution which I have to know about, to give more interest in my current subject the last few years of extra-terrestial intelligence. Human biology never interested me till I realised years ago, that you can`t think about the chances of other life out there if you don`t know the complexities of life here. The whole lot is all connected, as I`m sure you`ll know. I do have a taped Open University programme on the Burgess shale, and very interesting too, it`s one place I`d like to visit.
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