Sheaf Saint

Barnsley away please. They got humiliated at home in their opening game last week and it's only a short trip for me to get to.

As per my post #372, how about 0.17%?

He does kind of have a point, it pains me to say. The fact that our government is sending vast sums of money to countries that either don't need it or are wilfully spending it on anything other than human aid and development is an insult to the millions of people in the UK affected by the austerity policy. However, for a MEP to show such an astonishing lack of judgement in his choice of words is utterly cringey, and highlights just what UKIP really think of them bloody foreigners.

... Dammit! This bloody forum keeps duplicating all of my posts!

Actually it's not. The opening credits claim it is, but the Coens only included that as a red herring.

One of the biggest problems facing mankind in the coming decades is the need for ever-more agricultural land to provide food for a growing population. As Sussex Saint has already commented, the production of meat (particularly beef) is an incredibly inefficient process, and the amount of land given over to grazing and growing soya for cattle feed could provide ten times as much food energy if we cut out the middleman/cow and just eat the vegetables directly. So in that respect, I think this latest development is very significant. Personally, I have no problem eating food grown in a lab - I'm used to already due to my girlfriend being veggie and cooking a lot with quorn. However, pap raises an important point: that this could potentially lead to too much power over our food chain being given to giant bio-tech corporations like monstrous-Monsanto (the company that is so greedy and power-mad that it wants to get an EU patent on broccoli, meaning that all farmers everywhere would need to pay them a licence-fee for the right to grow it.) The answer to this lies in the hands of the consumer. People need to be educated as to where there food comes from and what impact it has, so that the average Joe can make choices about what food products we buy. I appreciate this is far easier said than done, because the single most important thing that people care about when food-shopping is price; asking people to pay more than they need to in order to take power away from giant food producers is like asking a dog not to bark. As the global population grows (projected to reach 9 billion before 2050), agricultural land becomes more scarce and valuable, and the extreme weather effects of climate change affect crops, food prices are going to rocket and many people will be thrust into real poverty - the kind that we simply are not used to in the western world. If we want to avoid the worst consequences of this then we all need to make some big changes to our dietary habits. Everybody will have to drastically reduce their levels of meat consumption so that the world's farmers can give more land over to growing fruit and vegetables for direct consumption by humans instead of for animal feed. People need to start buying locally-grown produce instead of going to the supermarket to buy goods that have been shipped half-way around the world before arriving on the shelf. Whether or not you are in favour of lab-grown meat now, in 20 years time we might all be incredibly grateful for it.

I don't watch a lot of TV drama because, with the odd exception every now an then, it's generally rubbish. But this is something I will definitely look forward to... http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/05/coen-brothers-fargo-fx-television-channel

Ooops. Wrong thread.

Unprecedented in the available data. Average temperatures can be determined to a good degree of accuracy using ice core samples. A study of these dating back over half a million years showed that the current rate of increase of global temperatures - 1.0 degrees per century and rising - did not occur at any point during that time period where the average rate of increase was just 0.1 degrees per year. Not even during the thawing from the last ice age did that rate of increase get anywhere near to the current figure.

So you're saying there is evidence to suggest that a rise in global temperatures could be the cause of increased CO2 levels, rather than the result of it? Fascinating. I would be interested to read this research, if you could tell me who carried out the study and where their findings were published that would be great. I agree with your second point. Scientific opinion is not something that can be put to a vote. No matter how bulletproof the evidence for a theory might be, it is still only a theory after all and can never be called 100% proof of anything. But then, by that token, gravity is only a theory isn't it; and you don't see many people jumping off bridges to try and disprove it.

There are other explanations for the huge increase in CO2 levels and a ten-fold rise in the rate of increase of the global mean surface temperature that, by pure coincidence, happen to have both occurred following the industrialisation of human society? Go on then, please share them with us. Please point us in the direction of a credible scientific study that can explain such unprecedented changes to the Earth's atmosphere without taking into account human activity.

They will walk this league

I really, really hope it's Malcolm Tucker. Can you imagine... "You Daleks had better f**k off back where you came from, or I'll shove this f**king sonic screwdriver straight down your f**king eyesocket!"

Not one of the 'experts' you refer to ever claimed to know it all, as you suggest; they merely put forward some evidence to suggest that these scenarios might happen. As usual, their claims were wildly exaggerated and sensationalised by the national media. The term climate change is now preferred by many simply because it is very difficult to predict exactly how a warming of the planet will affect the climate in different regions. The term global warming refers to an increase in the global mean surface temperature (GMST) and that this is increasing there is absolutely no doubt. The DM seem to have finally got something climate-related right for once, because data taken from ice cores show that the rate of increase since the beginning of the 20th century is approximately 10 times greater than at any point over the last half a million years. Because this rate of increase is unprecedented, trying to predict how it will affect regional climate and local weather systems is extremely difficult. For example, it is believed by many that the melting of the polar ice caps will have an adverse affect on the gulfstream, due to the increased amount of desalinated water sinking and disrupting the currents. Should this happen, as the planet warms, north-western Europe will likely see a decrease in average temperatures, as the gulfstream currents ensure that we currently have higher average temperatures than other locations at the same latitude (Without the gulfstream, Britain would have a climate more like that of Labrador). All of this is just an educated guess. Even the most sophisticated climate models are still only models and as such cannot be relied upon to give 100% accurate predictions. But one thing that is generally agreed by nearly all in the field of climate science is that warmer global temperatures will lead to more frequent extreme weather events, and the heatwaves that have struck North America over the last few years appear to show that this is already happening. This makes predicting long-range weather patterns even harder than they ever were before.

You have to laugh at the comments section on climate articles in the Daily Mail (really - you have to, otherwise you would cry!). I don't know anybody in real life that is quite as ill-informed and downright dumb as the people who comment on these articles, so where do they get them from? They all seem to be Americans who are convinced that the fact Al Gore has made a fortune from it is proof that AGW is a hoax.

I have recently been assigned an estate version of the new Astra, and I'm still getting used to the idea that it's a Vauxhall. I've always had a deep dislike of any Vauxhalls in the past, and the previous Astras were bloody awful things to drive, with a dashboard so cheap and plasticky that it looked like it came out of a Kinder egg. But the new ones are such a massive improvement in just about all areas. Good handling, decent build-quality, comfortable, economical, and a really good sound system. And that's all in just the basic model. It's probably the best of the three in terms of how much tax you will pay, seeing as it is the cheapest to buy and has really good fuel economy if you go for the 1.7 CDTi engine. I haven't driven either of the other two you mentioned, but the Focus looks really nice and will no doubt be of equal or slightly better build quality to the Astra, and the Golf will undoubtedly be a better car but you will pay for it through a higher tax code.

Went to see the new comedy from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost The World's End the other night. Was nowhere near as funny as the two previous instalments in their jokingly-titled Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) but still a good laugh and worth watching.

I understand the situations where zero hour contracts are necessary. My partner for example works in community support with mental health patients, and is on a zero-hr contract. It makes perfect sense because her organisation really do not know when or for how long her services are required each week. The good thing is, in her case anyway, that if a service-user cancels the appointment with her at short notice, she still gets paid for however many hours it was agreed she would have been working with them. In such cases, I have no objection to such contracts as they are nothing new and tend to benefit both parties. However, where you have a company like Sports Direct essentially getting their entire workforce on 0-hr contracts, knowing full well that most of them will be doing full time hours anyway, it's just a cynical and sh*tty way of getting cheap labour and not offering the rights and benefits that full-time employees are supposed to receive.

If the government are really serious about protecting minors from inappropriate content, then they could make a start by looking at the music charts... http://rock.rapgenius.com/Robin-thicke-blurred-lines-lyrics#note-1609183 Songs have been banned from the charts for many different reasons over the years, but it seems we have now reached a point where nobody is the slightest bit bothered about a number one single which advocates brutal, violent anal sex.

Ah yes, Huawei - the Chinese company that was recently identified by the US government as a threat to its national security.

Good read that. There is an even more in-depth analysis and comment on it here... http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/uk-internet-censorship-considerations.html Essentially, what Cameron is asking us to do is voluntarily accept broad-ranging internet censorship that will not succeed in it's supposed aim of protecting children from sexually-explicit content, and will only serve to harm legitimate businesses and make it easier for the government to identify potential 'high-risk' targets for surveillance based on their filtering choices. Considering how the tories loved to berate Labour when they were in office for creating a nanny state, it is extremely hard to believe that the ultimate aim of this legislation is actually what it is being dressed up as, and if the UK population just rolls over and accepts this as law (which we always do) then we can kiss goodbye to the principle of free speech to which we are supposedly entitled.

Atoms for Peace. Took a couple of listens but the album has really grown on me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o90VsOopAws

http://www.livescience.com/38347-north-pole-ice-melt-lake.html

Done mate - £10 donation to a worthy cause. Best of luck with it. I did a 60-mile ride between Leeds and Sheffield a few years ago and was shockingly under-prepared for it. Needless to say, I will be undertaking a fair bit more training when I (hopefully) attempt the Trans-Pennine Trail coast-to-coast ride this autumn. I'll be doing it for Mind so I'll share my justgiving page when it's all confirmed.