Did anyone else notice this article?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12969167
When I read it my I immediately thought "Of course" but that's because I'm old. What I mean is I have noticed in my lifetime that it has become easier to get sunburnt! I know that I burn very easily but it even allowing for that it does seem to me that it takes less time for anyone to burn and we all have to use a lot more sunscreen (or as it used to be called "sun tan lotion") these days. If the damage to the ozone layer is in the northern hemisphere as well as in the south this would go some way to explaining what I've noticed.
I must go as I have to find my sunhat before I carry our winter duvet to the launderette to be cleaned.
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Dilemma
I have a very comfortable pair of Karrimor walking shoes which I wear to and from work which are showing their age. The uppers are fine and they are still very comfortable but I have worn out the sole and heel. There is a firm that can re-build them with a new sole but this will cost £52.50 while I can buy another pair of Karrimor walking shoes for £30 at Amazon.
At first glance the obvious thing to do is ditch the old shoes and buy the new ones on-line. However I can't be sure that the new ones, which are less than half price, are as good a quality as the old ones.
My main dilemma is about waste. Why should I through away a perfectly repairable pair of shoes? While it may make sense in terms of cash in terms of use of the worlds resources it is a much hirer cost.
Does anyone have any views on what I should do? More importantly what would you do?
At first glance the obvious thing to do is ditch the old shoes and buy the new ones on-line. However I can't be sure that the new ones, which are less than half price, are as good a quality as the old ones.
My main dilemma is about waste. Why should I through away a perfectly repairable pair of shoes? While it may make sense in terms of cash in terms of use of the worlds resources it is a much hirer cost.
Does anyone have any views on what I should do? More importantly what would you do?
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
The Price of Oil
My local supermarket is selling milk at the eqivalent of £0.76 a litre
If I'm lucky a pint of beer in a pub will cost me £2.50 or £1.42 a litre.
So what is the cost of petrol? Is it about £1.20 a litre?
Or is it this:
If I'm lucky a pint of beer in a pub will cost me £2.50 or £1.42 a litre.
So what is the cost of petrol? Is it about £1.20 a litre?
Or is it this:
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Al Gore turned me into a climate change sceptic.
One of the odd occurrences in my life is that watching An Inconvenient Truth was the point at which I started being sceptical about man made global warming. Up until I saw it I had just gone with the flow and accepted that man's activities were making the climate warmer.
There were two things in the film that made me stop and think "that doesn't look right" and, by doing a very little research, made me want to swim against the flow.
The first was the "hockey stick graph" which showed thousands of years of steady temperatures followed by an accelerating upturn in the last few years. Now I wasn't any good at history at school but I even I know that there was a Roman warm period, and medieval warm period which was followed by the "little ice age" which means there can't be a straight handle for the hockey stick.
The other point was the "graph" Al Gore produced showing the historic movement of temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere. If I had presented a graph like that at school with no scales it would have been given back to me unmarked. It also brought to mind my sixth form stats teacher who pointed out that we could measure the height of the school entrance step and the height of the bushes planted beside the door and prove conclusively that as we trod on the step we were pushing it down and the bushes up - a correlation does not prove cause and effect. In the case of atmospheric CO2 recent research shows that historically the CO2 change happened after the temperature change - not surprising as a dissolved gas (carbon dioxide in this case) always becomes less soluble with increasing temperature. Again something I learnt at school.
My big problem is that most climate change sceptics use this as an excuse to do nothing about our over use of the worlds resources whereas I believe that, as Christians, we should be cutting our use of all the worlds resources to sustainable levels and ensuring an ethical division of resources around the world. Here in the UK our oil and gas consumption per person is about 2.5 times the global average which is socially unacceptable even if the world’s current rates of consumption are sustainable.
God gave us a beautiful planet to look after and enjoy not exploit.
There were two things in the film that made me stop and think "that doesn't look right" and, by doing a very little research, made me want to swim against the flow.
The first was the "hockey stick graph" which showed thousands of years of steady temperatures followed by an accelerating upturn in the last few years. Now I wasn't any good at history at school but I even I know that there was a Roman warm period, and medieval warm period which was followed by the "little ice age" which means there can't be a straight handle for the hockey stick.
The other point was the "graph" Al Gore produced showing the historic movement of temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere. If I had presented a graph like that at school with no scales it would have been given back to me unmarked. It also brought to mind my sixth form stats teacher who pointed out that we could measure the height of the school entrance step and the height of the bushes planted beside the door and prove conclusively that as we trod on the step we were pushing it down and the bushes up - a correlation does not prove cause and effect. In the case of atmospheric CO2 recent research shows that historically the CO2 change happened after the temperature change - not surprising as a dissolved gas (carbon dioxide in this case) always becomes less soluble with increasing temperature. Again something I learnt at school.
My big problem is that most climate change sceptics use this as an excuse to do nothing about our over use of the worlds resources whereas I believe that, as Christians, we should be cutting our use of all the worlds resources to sustainable levels and ensuring an ethical division of resources around the world. Here in the UK our oil and gas consumption per person is about 2.5 times the global average which is socially unacceptable even if the world’s current rates of consumption are sustainable.
God gave us a beautiful planet to look after and enjoy not exploit.
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