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.. you’ll have to let me know where the seminars are going to be, I might get a cheap flight down and listen in.
.. nice tough with the shampoo ..
that really is the most heartwarming and sound response i’ve seen for as long as i can remember and providing it’s a voluntary thing and not a gig to fleece some gullible tree huggers to part with their money (not that i have a problem with parting these people from their money) you have my best wishes with that project – superb post max
i have to admit though i recently soundly castigated a friend of mine for paying 180 for a laptop on ebay then another 190 repairing and upgrading it when he could’ve got a new one with a 12mth rtb warranty for cheaper and i’m buggered if i’m going to walk about with dirty hair or use obsolete laptops just for the sake of an ant in jakarta that we can’t even spell
as for the courses, i think you’re on a winner as results can only be subjectively guessed at so those playing along with it will probably not be disappointed as they’ll never know one way or the other – bit like religion really – an excellent and positive winning tactic
Although I’ve post the following on a different thread it seems more fitting on this one given the last few post, but I apolgise for the duplication nevetherless.
Freecycle is an informal network or community if you like, were people can give away or obtain or swap all sorts of different goods. We came across it a few months back when we were getting rid of some furniture which was to good to skip.However, believe it or not none of the three charities I rang to offer the furniture to (I also offered to deliver) wanted it.
Anyway, I don’t know how my missus came across it but within a day of posting on Freecycle all of our old furniture had been claimed and gone to a new home.
I don’t know if your interested in including this in your seminals Max as an example of community based action, but I think the more people that know about it the better. The only drawback for course, is that you need a computer and internet access to use the service.
Thanks for that, Simon. That’s very kind and I’m glad you saw the intention of my post.
And no, the courses are free, and for residents of a large urban estate in Nottingham. A place where there aren’t many trees left to hug, unfortunately.
The idea of the programmes, (funded by a charitable trust), are purely to educate and inform. As you know, no-one can begin to make any difference unless they know what the problem is.
Once I’ve compiled the packs, I’ll post one to you and Dave, (should you wish), so you can see what you’ve inspired.
And Pompete, thanks for that info. Interesting stuff; I’ll investigate that further and pass on the details to the right people. Looks useful.
Oh…and just to get the thread back on topic, took me two hours to travel ten miles near Southwell racecourse today after flash flooding. Unbelievable rainfall.
I do hope it drys up so I can go racing again – and they reckon it’s going to be November.
Would anyone like to say what use "carbon offsetting" can be?
I’m getting cynical now I’m getting old at the age of 22. I think a) it’s a great money making idea and b) it will make no difference to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere wordwide, and then there’s c) only IF man’s CO2 emissions are contributing to the d) "global warming", which is still unproven.
I think anyone who pays an extra £30 or whatever to "carbon offset" a long haul flight, is completely and utterly round the bend.
P.S – "climate change denier" is my middle name
P.S – “climate change denier” is my middle name
LOL. I know little about carbon offsetting so I can’t fully answer your question. It all looks more complicated than the Common Agricultural Policy!!
You might want to look at the work of Tversky and Kahneman on Judgement under Conditions of Uncertainty. A lot of their stuff is a must for punters LOL.
Denial as a reverse availability heuristic
“An opposite effect of the availability heuristic, called denial, occurs when an outcome is so upsetting that the very act of thinking about it leads to an increased refusal to believe it might occur. In this case, being asked to imagine the outcome actually made participants view it as less likely”
When it comes to climate change, what most people seem to be doing is grasping every straw, (normal cycles of climate change, lack of robust historical trends, volatile research findings), because the alternative is too frightening and just too damned big to contemplate. We’ll see,
Can I just point you in the direction of this website? It’s non preachy and some of the research is fantastic. I’ve learned loads from it.
I’ll have a look at that site Maxilon.
I know a lot about denial…it’s an interesting process
What do you think about Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth (or Convenient Lie, whichever way you want to look at it) being shown in schools?
I don’t think this year’s flooding has anything to do with global warming. And as for climate change – the climate changes in cycles all the time. Last year we were moaning about it being too hot and dry. Never happy are we?
Carbon off-setting, is where you continue on as normal, aware of the amount of carbon that your industries are producing and then pretend that you aren’t.
I don’t think this year’s flooding has anything to do with global warming. And as for climate change – the climate changes in cycles all the time. Last year we were moaning about it being too hot and dry. Never happy are we?
Mesh,
Your fella Cameron’s rather token appearance in the flooded parts of his home constituencies – strictly when it suited him following his African trip – seems to have gone down like the proverbial turd salad. Mock The Week had some gleeful fun last night at the photo of his quasi-Messianic, arms-out pose in the floods, “Is he trying to catch a fat dog?” etc.
You must be worrying. Even given the penalty kicks of arguably the biggest natural disaster to hit the country since 1947 (against which preventative measures had been advocated previously but not implemented), the announcement of exponential rail fare increases, postal strikes etc., and despite creaming Brown in all PMQs they have contested to date, Cameron has still failed to reassert himself adequately in the eyes of the electorate since Brown’s ascension (judging bt the opinion polls in this morning’s papers). Quo vadis for the Nasty Party?
Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
As a teenager I had a recuring dream that I am sitting on the roof of the house looking down on my home town under 20ft of water. It was an apocalyptic scenario (obviously). Starting to think now that it was more preminition than dream.
It’s quite scary the freakish weather we are having in a part of the world which wouldn’t be known for extremes.max, to show i can have an open mind i will take you up on that offer and even pay the postage
however, there is nothing to be scared of at all in my book as the planet should be fit for my purposes – ie, another 40yrs at tops i reckon, maybe a bit more – i don’t care what it does in 100 yrs
also, i thought the only people in denial were in egypt
do you think heather mills carbon footprint is half the size of mine ?
I liked it when it was the Nasty Party. I’m planning to turn up to the Tory Conference in a stretch Hummer. And to leave a bigger carbon footprint, I might fly up there too. The railways and roads are far too unreliable.
Without wishing to become embroiled in the Global Warming – is it happening? is it our fault? what will be the outcome? are we all doomed? type circuitous debate I’ll offer an opnion on this ‘Saving the Planet’ phrase that’s bandied about willy-nilly: what seems to be really meant by this is saving the planet so that six billion Homo sapiens can continue to exist (or subsist for the majority) in the style we’ve become accustomed to. On the grander scale we are in no position to – or in any way able to – save the planet as that is what Nature does admirably left to her own devices. Climate change/variation over the eons has played a vital part in determining species’ extinction and their evolutionary replacements.
So we may find it saddening/worrying that many a wondrous life-form (including our own) is threatened due to warming seas, encroaching deserts, flood, drought etc. And we may believe that we are in part responsible (I don’t know) but many more wondrous life-forms have become extinct in the past and wondrous new ones have replaced them, as they will continue to do in the future.
I’ve long believed that the current world human population is unsustainable over anything more than the short term (relatively speaking) and as such is terribly vulnerable to even the smallest change that Mother Nature foists on it: weak homeostasis
How would six billion souls have coped with the ‘recent’ series of glacials/interglacials (global cooling/warming)? Or does the fact that during this particular interglacial the population has reached such proportions ‘mean’ that the climate won’t vary again? Seems unlikely.
So the pessimistic outlook is that we may (emphasise may) be witnessing the dawn of a natural process that will result in a dramatic reduction of the human population back to what the natural world can sustain: strong homeostasis.
The optimistic outlook is a) mankind’s ingenuity will enable us cope with whatever is thrown our way, or b) I’m talking complete and utter tosh
Simon, there will be a carbon footprint test in the pack. Not sure how I can get hold of Heather’s.
Could be about four weeks and I’ll send it to you, no probs.I had my CF done three months ago and without the flights, I’m in good planet saving order. According to the test I did, flights are the equivalent of the Four Horsemen Coming. Massive loading.
I’m planning to turn up to the Tory Conference in a stretch Hummer.
Mesh, you’ll be popular! I’m sure you’ll see everyone arrive by Raleigh.
Make sure you get a Diesel if you do – but not an ethanol! There’s a huge Green conflict brewing with that caper.Drone, a nihilistic post, reminiscent of Bill Hicks classic “Virus with Shoes” sketch. I can’t afford to buy into it, though I’d like to. We’ve committed some unbelievable environmental atrocities as a species in the last millenium – and I’d like to leave something better behind for the kids.
Earlier, Pascal’s Dictum was mentioned in the lounge. The French philosopher believed that belief in God was a good each way bet, almost a no loser.
You can apply that logic to the climate change debate. It’s worth doing something just in case our twenty first century lives are killing the Earth faster than would ordinarily be the case. Doing nothing is risky, imo.
I could do a Dave Cameron and cycle to the conference, but as they’re having it in Blackpool, my legs can’t carry me that far.
They had it in Blackpool in 2005 if I remember rightly…my Tory friends at Exeter Uni took a plane up there, but that included one friend of mine who used to drive 20 miles to the nearest Waitrose as he wouldn’t do his shopping anywhere else. His carbon footprint must be enormous
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