Discussion
No it wasn't bloody scary. It was bloody annoying.
Why don't they rename this series "Apocalypse Horizon". All they ever seem to do nowadays is predict the end of the world.
It used to be a sensible science programme once. Now it's tabloid sensationalist tripe.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 13th January 22:01
Why don't they rename this series "Apocalypse Horizon". All they ever seem to do nowadays is predict the end of the world.
It used to be a sensible science programme once. Now it's tabloid sensationalist tripe.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 13th January 22:01
Eric Mc said:
No it wasn't bloody scary. It was bloody annoying.
Why don't they rename this series "Apocalypse Horizon". All they ever seem to do nowadays is predict the end of the world.
It used to be a sensible science programme once. Now it's tabloid sensationalist tripe.
>> Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 13th January 22:01
Are you disputing their findings ?
You got there just before me mate so i will post this here
Ok then
I'd never heard about it untill tonight. Anyone care to comment?
For any one who didn't see it:
Apparently the amount of solar energy reaching the earth is getting less.
This is caused by the visible or larger particles in pollution like ash filling up the clouds and reflecting sunlight.
This is said to be amongst other things the cause of the Ethiopian famine that killed 1 million and afflicted many more.
Scientists have found that by eliminating global dimming the effect of global warming may be accelerated well beyond what was previousely thought.
In a period of less than a century the british isles could become an arid land.
this is a pracy of the program and i have little or no experience in this so i found it interesting and quite plauseable.
>> Edited by bilko2 on Thursday 13th January 22:12
Ok then
I'd never heard about it untill tonight. Anyone care to comment?
For any one who didn't see it:
Apparently the amount of solar energy reaching the earth is getting less.
This is caused by the visible or larger particles in pollution like ash filling up the clouds and reflecting sunlight.
This is said to be amongst other things the cause of the Ethiopian famine that killed 1 million and afflicted many more.
Scientists have found that by eliminating global dimming the effect of global warming may be accelerated well beyond what was previousely thought.
In a period of less than a century the british isles could become an arid land.
this is a pracy of the program and i have little or no experience in this so i found it interesting and quite plauseable.
>> Edited by bilko2 on Thursday 13th January 22:12
Didn’t see the program but read the leader story on the web site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm
I’m with Eric on this one. More sensationalist claptrap from politicoscientists. The idea that humans can have an impact on the natural cooling and heating cycles of this planet is preposterous. Has it not escaped their notice that ice ages have been coming and going for billions of years long before we were dragging our knuckles around the planet?
>> Edited by t1grm on Thursday 13th January 22:16
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm
I’m with Eric on this one. More sensationalist claptrap from politicoscientists. The idea that humans can have an impact on the natural cooling and heating cycles of this planet is preposterous. Has it not escaped their notice that ice ages have been coming and going for billions of years long before we were dragging our knuckles around the planet?
>> Edited by t1grm on Thursday 13th January 22:16
They did tend towards journalistic hyperbole and only used the science to hang their apocolyptic editorial off of.
Science is massively misunderstood, which is partly the fault of the scientists and partly due to the fact that the media want a story to sell and the public/governments want definite answers. I've tried explaining to people that science is an evolution of ideas based on the available data. Instead i get the triumphant pub bore grinning at me saying "you scientists don't know f@ck all, thats your problem, its all bloody guess work with you lot"
I can't really comment on the programme until i've read a little more around the subject. If its accurate then our children and grandchildren have difficult problems to face.
Science is massively misunderstood, which is partly the fault of the scientists and partly due to the fact that the media want a story to sell and the public/governments want definite answers. I've tried explaining to people that science is an evolution of ideas based on the available data. Instead i get the triumphant pub bore grinning at me saying "you scientists don't know f@ck all, thats your problem, its all bloody guess work with you lot"
I can't really comment on the programme until i've read a little more around the subject. If its accurate then our children and grandchildren have difficult problems to face.
Britain may become a desert wasteland but Greenland might be lovely.
I'm off to check on land values north of the Arctic Circle.
No - I really thought that this really was sensationalist nonsense.
It is interesting that, whenever some pundit warns us of some looming catastrophe, when asked about what time in the future their predictions will come to pass, they alsways say something like "20 to 25 years". Now. isn't that funny. 20 to 25 years ago (1980 to 1985 for those who are too lazy to count) we were told that in 20 to 25 years the world would be:
starving because of too many people
grinding to a halt because fossil fuels would he used up
entering a new ice age
How much of that actually happened.
NONE OF IT.
I'm off to check on land values north of the Arctic Circle.
No - I really thought that this really was sensationalist nonsense.
It is interesting that, whenever some pundit warns us of some looming catastrophe, when asked about what time in the future their predictions will come to pass, they alsways say something like "20 to 25 years". Now. isn't that funny. 20 to 25 years ago (1980 to 1985 for those who are too lazy to count) we were told that in 20 to 25 years the world would be:
starving because of too many people
grinding to a halt because fossil fuels would he used up
entering a new ice age
How much of that actually happened.
NONE OF IT.
chris_freebie said:
Maybe the yanks will have to produce every day cars with engines less than 2.5 litres in size.........
I mean 5.0 litre V8's to produce 75 bhp what's that about.
Scarey that the global dimming was keeping us cool !
Thing is, the American manufacturers are at the cutting edge of fuel cell, hydrogen, LPG, CNG, electric and bio-oil fuel technologies. The problem with America is that the likes of Hank and Betty have always had a truck, their parents have a truck, America 'own I-raq's ass' and they want their gas cheap so they can drive their tanks.
The solution would be to either direct alternative fuel research at SUVs, or put fuel prices up in America.
Actually, just get rid of the commercial vehicle tax loop...
I thought it was sensationalist cods' made in the style of a Michael Moore film. Cue shots of starving babies in Ethiopia with depressing music and then cut to you stuck in traffic round the M25. Interesting that none of the scientists committed to the theory but lots of "it 'may' happen", 'maybes', 'ifs' and 'ands'. They seem to be making it up as they go along, but I'm sure they have their hands out for bigger budgets. The term 'Biblical scale' was used to describe various disasters. So I guess such disasters happened (as I'm sure they did), 2k+ years ago, some time before people drove cars. 
For a decade or more we have been preached to about global warming and how it is destroying the ozone layer and how this has led to an increase in skin cancer. Doesn't this contradict global dimming? No mention of the ozone, supposedly the thing which has been eroding and exposing us to more, not less, solar radiation.
They just seem to select the facts (dodgy, selective statistics) that suit them in order to make a sensational program from a particular point of view.
Cue Turbobloke.
For a decade or more we have been preached to about global warming and how it is destroying the ozone layer and how this has led to an increase in skin cancer. Doesn't this contradict global dimming? No mention of the ozone, supposedly the thing which has been eroding and exposing us to more, not less, solar radiation.
They just seem to select the facts (dodgy, selective statistics) that suit them in order to make a sensational program from a particular point of view.
Cue Turbobloke.
FourWheelDrift said:
If it was all true then why isn't every government looking into opening new Nuclear power stations for cleaner electricity production, not closing them down and not building new ones.
Absolutely. When you start listening to what what environmentalists rather than lentilists have to say Nuclear Power seems like the best option!
Sure the waste it makes is really, really nasty. For a long, long time. But in comparison to anything else at all there isn't very much of it.
Roll on fusion. But in the mean time...
Oh. And since watching a recent Horizon programme about a subject in which I am an expert (IT) I have become utterly disillusioned in it.
FourWheelDrift said:
If it was all true then why isn't every government looking into opening new Nuclear power stations for cleaner electricity production, not closing them down and not building new ones.
Political suicide, the greenies have got everyone so paranoid that it will never become a viable alternative
Horizon has long since sunk to the nadir of objective scientific reporting. It was (and theoretically still is) BBC's flagship science programme. I have some episodes on tape from 20 plus years ago (I even have one from 1974) when it genuinely was a sensible, watchable, NORMAL documentary programme.
These days it only seems to want to look at issues which portend "the end of the world as we know it". It has become a mockery of an objective scientific programme and should be taken off the air and replaced with something much more informative and interesting, like re-runs of "The Goodies".
These days it only seems to want to look at issues which portend "the end of the world as we know it". It has become a mockery of an objective scientific programme and should be taken off the air and replaced with something much more informative and interesting, like re-runs of "The Goodies".
JMGS4 said:
If the meteorologists can't even predict 5 days in advance with any degeree of accuracy, how the hell are they going to predict with any accuracy what might/could happen? Could be just politicalscience to ensure we're al kept afraid!!!
To generate a full model of the climate system covering all spatial scales, and then use it to run a 50 year projection into the future, would take more than 10 to the power of 34 years of supercomputer time, according to Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. This timescale is 10 to the power 24 times longer than the current age of the universe, which itself is about 10 billion years.
Calculation in progress, please wait...Estimated time remaining: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years
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