SaintBobby

I've found the more I've read about it, the more it's obvious that there are very big disagreements amongst the experts - and an acceptance by the experts that there are enormous uncertainties and a universal acceptance that climatology is a science in its infancy. To continue with the shark analogy.... Even if the shark is out there (which is not universally accepted by any means), there is a huge area of disagreement about whether the shark is a 30 foot beast or a 6 inch tiddler. And even if it is a 30 foot beast, it isn't obviously a carnivore - it may be a coward which flees from mankind. And even if it is a carnivore, it might be fairly straightforward to set up nets or barriers that keep it away from from the area of water close to the beach which we want to swim in. And even if we can't erect such barriers, we might just be willing to accept that every time we go swimming there's a one in a million chance that we will be eaten by a shark. There are a lot of steps between confidently asserting "there is a shark out there" and concluding "we need to move to a world in which no human being ever enters the water again"

I'm not persuaded the highlighted belief is arrogant (I don't believe the planet was created for us btw...just that we are an accident of nature). I believe - morally - that human lives are almost infinitely more valuable than the lives of chickens, termites, mosquitos, jellyfish etc. And that humanity is, indeed, infinitely more important than non-sentient life - cucumbers, bracken, mushrooms etc. It is acceptable for someone to take a different moral stance. For example, that God entrusted the Earth to us and we will anger Him terribly if we pluck too many apples from the forbidden tree or that our management of the planet's resources should be arranged in such a way as to primarily benefit goldfish. I wouldn't consider either of these alternative positions "arrogant", just wrong. The case that we are "harvest[ing] whatever resources we care to without any fear of consequence" is a straw man argument. I can think of no human exploitation of the planet - mining, drilling for oil, making furniture out of trees which has been done without fear of consequences. That doesn't mean that mistakes aren't made or that visceral greed is never present. But our (often very brave) exploitation of the planet has been precisely what has driven civilisation forward. In any event, if Earth was an apple, mankind has yet to drill through the skin. And who knows what useful stuff we might eventually find in the wider universe, within which our own planet is not even a speck. The "we would need 3.5 as many resources" to all live like Westerners line, falls foul of a very common green misnomer. Namely, that scientific advancement has reached its zenith. In fact, we can be supremely confident that we will get better and better at the smart use of natural resources. I don't know if nuclear power will go on to provide the entire world with clean, cheap energy for everyone. Or if nanotechnology will lead to the almost total elimination of disease. Or if GM food will make human malnutrition a thing of the past. Or if someone will invent a supersonic helicopter that runs off tangerine juice. But I am supremely confident that human ingenuity will prevail. I think today is the best time to be alive for mankind on virtually any sensible criteria you care to pick. Average income and wealth per person. Access to running water. Life expectancy. Infant mortality rates. Amount of leisure time per person. Propensity to recover from illness, disease or injury. Access to electricity. Access to telecommunications. Ability to travel substantial distances both cheaply and quickly. Reduced prospect of being forcibly drafted to go to war. Greater equality for women and ethnic minorities. Longevity and health in retirement. The list just goes on and on. It is not true that this graph is a simple straight line of permanent human improvement (I think things were worse for New Yorkers during and immediately after 9/11 than just before it; the UK economy has not yet recovered to its 2008 levels; Zimbabwe is probably a worse place today even than it was under white supremacist rule etc), but the overall, basic trend is overwhelmingly positive. I think there are interesting and difficult moral questions about inter-generational equity. But if we in the West are even a tad concerned, just a mite worried about the environment we will leave to our kids and grandkids, we should be absolutely apoplectic about the financial debt we are leaving them.

That's 2 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back.

Deforestation may well constitute a human rights abuse of the indigenous population. It's their HUMAN rights which concern me, not deforestation per se. I don't agree with your implication that mankind has brought itself to be the very brink of disaster. 2012 is, pretty much, the best year to be alive in the history of humanity and 2052 will be even better. 3012 will be almost inconceivably better.

Species extinction concerns me very slightly. There may be biodiversity issues - with a knock-on impact, but in and of itself, it's not a disaster that the dodo is extinct, for example. I wouldn't say that one particular human group is more important than any others (for example, if banning X saves 100 lives in group A but causes 200 deaths in group B, then don't ban X)

I'm pretty decisively pro-human on these matters. The environment and the planet are ours to exploit, alter, drill and adapt to our own needs and desires. Putting aside a small, residual concern for other sentient life forms, I would only measure ecological damage in terms of how it impacts on us. Pollution, deforestation, leaded petrol etc don't trouble me per se - they trouble me only in so far as they impact on humanity (which can be a considerable, negative impact, obviously).

In fairness, disposable income today is about the same as it was in 2005. (we are still some way from getting back to pre-crash 2008 levels). So, I'd say this amounts to pretty impressive sales. Also, being in the top flight for 20+ years generates more year-on-year publicity (and presumably sales) than having climbed out of 3rd division after a 7 year absence.

What's the price difference (taking account of inflation?) I'd have thought the club should set the prices to try and sell about 23,000 season tickets given current capacity, and they seem to have done that pretty well.

Am surprised club hasn't made more of the fact if we've sold 22K+ season tickets.

My (pretty limited) understanding of the scientific debate is that there has been a pretty substantial backtracking/revision of the more catastrophic predictions. For example, the IPCC have quietly ditched the "hockey stick" graph (which forecasts accelerating, apocalyptic results). Similarly, the scientific papers are usually much more qualified/conditional/moderate than the accompanying headlines which render the science too simple, too apocalyptic and too eye-catching. For example, I doubt there are many leading scientists who would still endorse Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" without a very long list of qualifications (they might consider it useful in PR terms to draw public attention to the purported problem, but computer generated images of e.g. Manhattan 20 feet under water are shock tactics not science). A fair number of posters on this thread seem to embrace the precautionary principle (i.e. "even if there's only a 30% chance of this being true and a 10% chance of it being really catastrophic, we'd be wise to take some pretty dramatic steps to try and prevent it happening. If these steps turn out to be have been unnecessary, well that's just part of the uncertainty of life"). I'm not persuaded of this approach. It at least needs to build in the potential unintended consequences of making carbon-based energy much more expensive. This is too often caricatured as simply involving rich Westerners insulating their lofts or installing catalytic convertors in their cars. The impact on those in the poorer parts of the world are much less trivial and could often literally be a matter of life and death. A horrific example of the precautionary principle being applied was the ban on DDT use following the publication of "Silent Spring", which argued DDT was potentially damaging to wildlife. The consequence of this well-intentioned, but ill-considered, policy has been the entirely avoidable deaths of thousands upon thousands of people from malaria. My scepticism is further underscored by the fact that climate change follows in a long line of apocalyptic scare stories which have turned out to be utter nonsense despite overwhelming scientific evidence being claimed for these theories at the time. This doesn't mean climate change isn't a problem. But it does mean that we should at least raise an eyebrow before taking some of the claims on board. For more on this, I recommend http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook440pdf.pdf This addresses your point about ignoring scientists being like the mayor of Amity Island refusing to close the beach.... I'm not sure we should just take scientists' pronouncements hook, line and sinker about risk and simply roll them out as public policy. Jaws would have been a very different (and enormously less exciting) movie if the mayor had been right. There was no shark, or not much chance of the shark posing much of an ongoing danger, but the beach is closed as a precaution, large numbers of local businesses go under, lifeguards lose their jobs, a high proportion of the local population sink into economic and mental depression, some even become suicidal. The purpose of Jaws was to frighten its audience with a wholly unrealistic narrative about the behaviour of a great white shark. Not to provide a sensible, mature overview of balancing safety and leisure in high density tourist areas with potentially lethal indigenous wildlife. I often feel like a lot of stories emanating from the "green lobby" are too much like the former (Jaws) and not enough like the latter (a calm, collected, more boring view of what we should actually do).

I suppose there's a 6th specifically UK-question as well. Given that the UK accounts for 1% of the world's population and, I think, about 2% of greenhouse emissions, to what extent are we confident that it is wise to lead by example? Even if we were able to reduce our carbon emissions to zero, the impact will be derisory if the powerhouses of China, India and Brazil are hugely increasing their emissions. This might, I suppose, make apocalypse inevitable - but the UK's policy wouldn't seem to have much rationale other than perhaps giving British taxpayers a better argument to deploy when we finally get to the pearly gates.

Are they really keen on signing a player whose name is pronounced "Must have a dumb buyer"?

Furthermore, if global warming is happening AND net beneficial, we should subsidise carbon emissions, not tax them. But that aside, if solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power, tangerine juice or humans running around inside our own enormous hamster wheels become cheaper than carbon-based energy production, well fine. But that has nothing to do with climate change. Just technological advancement. If insulating your loft saves a fortune on domestic fuel bills (and thus also adds to the value of the property), this will be provided by the market.

This is highly, highly contested. See, for example, Matt Sinclair's "Let Them Eat Carbon"

I think - simply for PR reasons - if I was Kanu's agent or TBH's agent, I'd say "We are aware that the club will close if we demand payment now. However, a further £11m of parachute payments are available if the club survives. It is unclear why this money should be used as a windfall bonus for any potential new owners. In consequence, we are willing to defer any claims under the football creditors rule until these payments arrive and are happy to do so at an interest rate of 0%".

Genuine question: why don't the departing senior players just peg their demands to the arrival of the next parachute payment?

My take on it is that I'm sceptical about the green policies, but not a denier on the science. Seems there are quite a few hurdles for the green lobby to leap - and not much research to show they can leap all of them. 1. Is climate change actually happening? 2. If so, is much of the impact anthropogenic? 3. In any event, is warming a bad thing? (why would we assume the current, prevailing global temperature is optimal, perhaps a global 1 degree increase would be good for mankind overall?) 4. Even if it is a bad thing and caused in substantial part by human activity, might we be better to simply live with the consequences? (to give a simplified example, if the consequence in the UK is that Norfolk and Cornwall will be uninhabitable by 2030, maybe we would be better off - on balance - to continue to emit carbon as we are and plan to relocate those living in these two counties rather than make it crushingly expensive to drive a car or keep warm in winter?) 5. Even if the consequences are very bad, largely man made and extremely severe, are we better to mitigate the consequences or try and prevent it happening? (e.g. perhaps we should focus most effort on building very substantial flood defences rather than on encouraging solar panels etc?) To embrace the current green agenda, you need to be able to be very sure of your position on all 5 of these questions - not just the first two.

Not a great idea, I'd suggest. Tesco's security staff take a dim view of that sort of behaviour...

Glad we're giving a lick of paint to the stadium. Doubt we will expand the stadium for 2+ years at least. Ecstatic about the red felt. I nearly didn't renew my ST due to the crappy felt at St Marys :-)

Genius. Can someone forward this to Cortese and Adkins, please? It's so simple, yet so amazingly compelling. They need to hear it.

If I was TBH, I might offer the fans a "meet me halfway" deal. If you bring me 18K a week in cash, I'll waive the rest of my contract. If between the lot of you, you can't raise 18K per week in cash, it's pretty obvious no one out there cares much about the club either.

Thanks for the info. Still seems possible to me that if Portsmouth liquidate, the PL could shrug their shoulders and keep the final parachute payments for themselves rather than use them to guarantee TBH and Kanu a better pension?

Can someone just clarify that the parachute payments would be used, in the event of liquidation, to pay football creditors. What's the source for this and the rebuttal of the line that "if the club gets liquidated, the players get nothing anyway"?

Niemi. I thought Jones was perfectly good. Niemi, however, turned out to be amazing.

Am I nearly alone in not being wowed by Ward-Prowse yet? Don't get me wrong - he looks pretty good and I have high hopes, but he's nowhere near my starting XI at the moment. I do genuinely believe in the wisdom of crowds though - so I might have missed something? Schneiderlin, Davies, Cork, (even) Hammond are all ahead of him in my mind