Verbal

If you can tell me the name and nationality of the pilot, I'll start to believe you. (And he wasn't Russian!)

And worst of all, had it not been for those damned socialists, you'd have learned to spell and express yourself legibly in what I can only assume is your second language.

All you're doing is wheeling out yet another tired, discredited CC denier - this time, someone who is not only bought and paid for by two Canadian oil industry lobby firms, but who lies on his CV (claiming he his a Doctor of Science in Climatology, when he is in fact a Doctor of Philosophy in Geography). As the following link points out: "It must be soul-destroying to see a long-retired geographer who rarely published during his colourless academic career and who never conducted any research in atmospheric science dismiss that effort without a shred of evidence or a hint of good conscience." http://www.desmogblog.com/dr-tim-ball-the-lie-that-just-wont-die Can't you at least give us ONE scientist who is not untrained in atmospheric chemistry, and a liar? You really can't find one credible source for whatever it is you so religiously believe?

This is quite childish. FWIW, and as I've already said, I thought some of the comments in those PRIVATE emails were injudicious, given the hysterical nature of deniers, who see conspiracies everwhere. But are you really suggesting that a few ambiguous, but still privately expressed comments, amount to a demolition of atmospheric chemistry itself? If so, St Canute, you're even flakier than I thought was possible - or, as I suspect, you're just on a colossal wind-up. Because no one can be THAT imbecilic...can they?

St George does the best impression of King Canute I've seen in ages. Very funny - although I strongly suspect he's Scooby MkII, and adopting the 'persona' of a noodlebrain sent round the bend by an incurable internet addiction to conspiracy theories, in which science is really an international Masonic cult out to hoodwink everyone to achieve its own Smersh-like aims. Good luck with your Thatcher question, badger. I suspect you won't get an answer - or if you do, it'll be that she submitted to the cult.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why even the most law-abiding resort to smuggling.

I had no idea you had republican tendencies. Welcome to the dark side! (And off with their heads - although personally I think Made Guillotine is too good for them.)

Dangerous idea to bring on here. Leave it to us lot and the country will be festooned with gallows.

Precisely.

I wish there was a smiley for a Mutley laugh.

Ten years. By which time the tories will have imploded and Labour can vote her back in. HTH.

You know, I'd really like to believe that climate change was a myth, I really would. The problem is that the deniers are such a bunch of foaming-at-the-mouth weirdos, fantasists, narcissistic attention-seekers, paranoid survivalists and politicians corrupted by greed and oil money that it makes it a tad difficult. If only there was a genuine, balanced disagreement among respected, disinterested scientists, then perhaps this would be a real debate. But it isn't - there's a broad consensus about the fundamentals, and a few leaked private emails from a group of scientists hounded by said oddities isn't going to change that. Of course, expect the paranoids to be out in force after this. But I'll be having fun just watching them work themselves into an awful screech about a global conspiracy bought into by the 'sheople' (© Charlie Brooker) and from which the foamers - and they alone - stand in Olympian and (in their eyes only) magnificent disdain.

It just goes to show you can't be too careful.

Quite. From that link: "The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it."

Some wise words on the UEA hack: "The problem is that the files and emails seem just too good to be true. A number of files seem to be smoking guns — revealing how to resist Freedom of Information Act requests for their data (which would both be scientific misconduct and actually illegal); long-term marketing plans on how to push the climate-change agenda; and discussions of how to pressure peer-reviewed journals to stop accepting papers that disagree with the “accepted” view of global warming. In other words, just what the skeptics have been suggesting for years. It seems just too neat, and we don’t have independent verification of where the files came from. Someone who is willing to hack might also be willing to create fakes. But then, the whole package is very large — 63 megabytes — and seems to be very internally consistent. Several people have already corroborated a number of the emails as being ones they wrote or received. The package also includes substantial data and computer programs, which are being explored as this is being written. The best we can say right now is that we should keep our eyes on this. If these files are eventually corroborated and verified, it is a bombshell indeed — evidence that there has been a literal conspiracy to push the anthropogenic climate change agenda far beyond the science. It will mean the end of some scientific careers, and it might even mean those careers will end in jail." http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/hacker-releases-data-implicating-cru-in-global-warming-fraud/2/

I'm sure there's nothing in this whatsoever, St George, but does the fact that Senator Inhofe has received $2,182,631 from the oil & gas industries since 1998, (according to OpenSecrets.org) have any possible bearing on his views?

It just goes to show you can't be too careful.

You mean, do we know of any new (ish) 32,000-capacity stadiums hanging about? I'm sure if we all thought very hard we could think of somewhere. And it's a chance to help Pompey out by having them incur the bidding costs but have the games, and the profits, go elsewhere. Winners all round.

I've seen private footage of one of those things in action in Sierra Leone. (The SAS had borrowed it for a raid). Frightening fire power.

Because you didn't get to see the whales' house, stupid.

If that were true, things might be slightly easier. Unfortunately, the Afghan campaign, particularly in Helmand, is directed and orchestrated from South Waziristan, and you'll even find 'mainland' Pakistanis in among the Taliban fighters. And it's far, far more than a few 'small bands'. This is why the Americans spend so much time and effort hitting the Taliban leadership with drone aircraft (and with a fair amount of success). Almost all of these attacks are in notionally Pakistani territory - either the Tribal Areas or Baluchistan. Furthermore, none of the al Qaeda leadership is in Afghanistan - all of the big players are in the Pakistani Tribal Areas or on the Pakistani mainland. (Many al Qaeda arrests, like bin Alshibh, were in Karachi.) My point is that if you pull the troops out now, or soon, the effect would be pretty much what we have already. The majority of Afghanistan is 'pacified'. although under the control of fairly reprehensible warlords. That which isn't is subject to attacks that are planned and executed from the Pakistani Tribal Areas. It would hardly be perfect, but it wouldn't be the vacuum you may imagine - and may even improve, if the real problem of militancy is sorted out in the Tribal Areas.

You've got it the wrong way around. The 'spill over' to Pakistan that you're worried about actually happened years ago - and the problem now rolls in from Pakistan to Afghanistan. I know this all too painfully well, having had my Karachi-based 'fixer' kidnapped by the Taliban last year and held in South Waziristan for six months. Much of the threat in Helmand actually comes from the notionally Pakistani tribal areas - that's where the 'real' battle is taking place. And it's taking place right now between Pakistani military forces and the Taliban. To equate the Taliban with some random plane-bombing nutter is to misunderstand the nature of the beast. What they do, and why they do it, is so ingrained that it pre-dates Islam. They live by an ancient warrior code and have always fought any and all invaders. They have never been defeated, in the sense that the invaders have always left. They don't need to be in power to gain advantage over outsiders - and it seems they're better off when exiled to the mountains, as they are now. The best way to minimise risk, in my opinion, is to support and encourage the Pakistani army to see through the assault on the Taliban in their tribal strongholds in the Waziristans. Cut off the head rather than nip at the tail. That won't in itself 'defeat' the Taliban, but it will cut out a supply route for assaults in Afghanistan. Western support for and pressure on the Pakistani army also serves to protect the nuclear warheads...hopefully.

You should save up for a telly. and what's the deal with you, exactly, deciding that you're the only one with a valid opinion?

aintforever has a point though. Even Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, thought the training camps were a waste of space. When Clinton attacked the camps with missiles, and in the subsequent ground assault by Afghan warlords, the camps were all but abandoned. Those who carried out the attacks were from Saudi Arabia, aside from Mohammad Atta, the leader, who was Egyptian. All of the serious preparation for those attacks was carried out in Hamburg and the US (on flight-training courses), not Afghanistan. The camps were symbolic, and little else. The real training was not in jumping over puddles of water and under barbed wire carrying a toy AK47. The 9/11 attackers needed to drive planes into buildings - not something easily mastered in the blasted desert plains of Afghanistan. The real problem was the alliance that had been forged between the Taliban and Al Qaeda - an alliance that is now shattered, and that long ago moved on to the wild margins of Pakistan.