[UK] Government pay-per-use car taxation petition

[Trevor]

You want to look after humanity and yourself, and keep the planet in a way that you see as benefitting us, whether it be natural or man-made.

Interesting. Yes thats pretty much true.

What I want is a sustainable, unpolluted society/environment. I don\'t really care if its man made, \'natural\' or whatever, as long as its conducive to my existence. In fact, I can\'t see it being anything other than man made, we\'ve changed too much already.

I\'m kind of strange for an environmental scientist, I dislike conservation, because people have hijacked it for all the wrong reasons and it is often pointless (well the whole of existence is pointless, but thats a different story entirely).

I also don\'t buy into this natural/unatural crap. Everything we do is natural and pretty much everything has analogues in the \'natural\' world. This bizarre idea that just because something is natural it must be good and because its man-made bad, is stupid.

What I do think is that we are doing a number of things that are going to make life very difficult in the next few years. What really pisses me off are those that don\'t see or don\'t care that their actions are threatening my existence. Selfish on my part yes, but I\'m fed up with breathing in other peoples pollution.

Too many damn people on the planet, we need a cull.

 

[Evil Dave]

Originally posted by Trevor
Too many damn people on the planet, we need a cull.

On that we agree.

 

[Legacy Account]

Originally posted by reverend

Originally posted by philologus

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
One of the many reasons I\'m leaving this shithole of a country....

Where are you moving to?

He asked me to look him up a few holiday homes on the coast of West Wales. He\'s keen, I tell yer lol

My lass is Welsh..... from Bridgend. Can\'t say I\'d want to move there!

It looks like NZ, in around 9 or 10 months. House is ready to sell and I\'m busy trying to get rid of excess stuff....

 

[philologus]

Originally posted by Spacemunkie

Originally posted by reverend

Originally posted by philologus

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
One of the many reasons I\'m leaving this shithole of a country....

Where are you moving to?

He asked me to look him up a few holiday homes on the coast of West Wales. He\'s keen, I tell yer lol

My lass is Welsh..... from Bridgend. Can\'t say I\'d want to move there!

It looks like NZ, in around 9 or 10 months. House is ready to sell and I\'m busy trying to get rid of excess stuff....

Well, good luck to you then Scott. I hope everything works to your benefit.

 

[Infidel Castro]

Originally posted by Spacemunkie

Originally posted by reverend

Originally posted by philologus

Originally posted by Spacemunkie
One of the many reasons I\'m leaving this shithole of a country....

Where are you moving to?

He asked me to look him up a few holiday homes on the coast of West Wales. He\'s keen, I tell yer lol

My lass is Welsh..... from Bridgend. Can\'t say I\'d want to move there!

It looks like NZ, in around 9 or 10 months. House is ready to sell and I\'m busy trying to get rid of excess stuff....

A good call as well. We\'re getting skinned left, right and centre at the moment. France is my ideal stop-off place, though time will tell if such a thing is viable.

 

[Trevor]

An interesting factual bit on CO2 for those that still believe we aren\'t having an effect.

The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) has published the final results of analysis performed on a 3.2 km long ice core that they extracted from the frozen land at the bottom of the world. And the results are clear: CO2 levels are higher now than they have been at any time during the last 800,000 years. And they\'ve been increasing faster than at any time during the past 800,000 years:

\"Ice cores reveal the Earth\'s natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range,\" explained Dr Wolff.

The \"scary thing\", he added, was the rate of change now occurring in CO2 concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order of 30 parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 years.

\"The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really are in the situation where we don\'t have an analogue in our records,\" he said.

So there you go, folks. We\'re off the map and well into terra incognita.

Let me just repeat that, fastest natural change in CO2 in last 800,000 was 30ppm in 1,000 years, but the last 17 years have seen a 30ppm increase. Thats almost 60 times faster.

 

[Evil Dave]

Mount Saint Helens erupted about 27 years ago. Estimates were that when it erupted it put more carbon into the air than if the entire population of the US drove non stop 24 hours a day for ten years.
I \'m relatively sure that we are seeing a large influx of carbon, but I\'ve never heard of Ice cores being accurate within twenty years to a decade, being more of a rough estimate than a dead on value.
Terra Incognito would imply we actually knew what was going on before, we don\'t.
In essence we\'ve been Terra Incognito our entire exsitance as a species.

 

[Dammekkos2]

Let me just repeat that, fastest natural change in CO2 in last 800,000 was 30ppm in 1,000 years, but the last 17 years have seen a 30ppm increase. Thats almost 60 times faster.

Yes, this is scientific fact as far as I am concerned, as is the other point I made about global warming rates (I can\'t remember the source, but it was based on similarly well accepted scientific practices). I can see how core readings can be accurate within 20yrs if it the most recent 20yrs (it\'s not like they\'re digging 1km down into the ice for this stuff).

In the UK, last year was the hottest on record (I wouldn\'t be surprised if the UK\'s records were the most complete, or at least close). January night temperatures this year have so far been warmer than July last year, and it\'s predicted that the month as a whole will beat last year\'s July too (and it was a good Summer last year iirc). I personally find this sort of stuff alarming, and people who blindly dismiss the evidence are in denial, imho. Yes there have always been warming and cooling periods, but scientific data is overwhelmingly telling us that this time the rates of change are a lot quicker.

Perhaps the people that continue to deny this (Dave! :~( ) will find comfort in this site, I\'m sure it may be the type of reading that you enjoy - http://www.exxonsecrets.org/

(from this site, which contains lots of info / links on climate change - http://www.radiohead.com/offroad.html ):~(

 

[Evil Dave]

Dude, believe what you want, but believe this:
Those taxes will not make it to any green fund, they will make it no further than your politicians pet projects.

You want green but you don\'t want to sacrifice, there\'s nobody who does, until it would be far to late.

So keep trying, keep putting more money into your politicians pockets, and try not to be surprised when nothing gets accomplished.

You have to start on a personal level, and how many people do you think will do that?

Also: A Greenpeace sponsored sight? Oh, no they\'re not biased or anything.lol

 

[Dammekkos2]

Originally posted by Evil Dave
Dude, believe what you want, but believe this:
Those taxes will not make it to any green fund, they will make it no further than your politicians pet projects.

You want green but you don\'t want to sacrifice, there\'s nobody who does, until it would be far to late.

So keep trying, keep putting more money into your politicians pockets, and try not to be surprised when nothing gets accomplished.

You have to start on a personal level, and how many people do you think will do that?

Also: A Greenpeace sponsored sight? Oh, no they\'re not biased or anything.lol

I want green but I don\'t want to sacrafice? Please read my response in the thread about rising petrol prices. I don\'t really see how you can make that claim without any evidence whatsoever, it kind of puts your other posts in a more dubious light for me.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/viewthread.php?tid=14320 (My comment here is somewhat of an economic argument, but also largely based on social responsibility, as I don\'t really need a car anymore)

People, and governments, in this continent are starting to take more social responsibility. There has been a surge in sales of residential wind turbines (partially solving the issues about wind farms - there is enough space to partially power all homes, if all homes include the power generator as part of their structure), and there is always new legislation being passed for recycling and emmissions (continental Europe has always been good for recycling, but the UK is finally starting to catch up). I thnik your confusing the governments here with the government on another continent (one that might find the hurricane season in this Elnino year a bit problematic).

Most of your arguments so far have been logically explained to some degree, but that\'s the first post that\'s made me think \"WTF?\". It\'s just basically rhetoric about political corruption and greed, there\'s no real content in that one whatsoever (maybe something about the bias of greenpeace, but the point was to show the amount of special interest groups that sponsor anti-ecology research projects). It is fact. Or you could accuse them of lying, but that would be pure delusion. It would be economically crippling for them to do so, the lawsuits would be relentless.

No offence though, as I say your previous posts have included valid arguments (which I think are mostly incorrect), but that last one seemd a bit off the cuff to me.

 

[philologus]

Threadomancy

Threadomancy due to reading a particularly applicable quote.

\"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.\"

-H.L. Mencken, 1920

 

[noneedforaname]

If anyone is familiar with the comedian bill hick\'s he makes plenty of reference to that sort of behaviour regarding the US government.

\"stay in your homes america, you are safe, your government is in charge and now here is american gladiators.\"