There is a lot of talk at the moment about climactic change and global warming and how a lot of it may indeed be just scare mongering and misinterpretation. Many people will hurriedly point out that the planets surface and ocean temperature is rising steadily year on year. And that’s quite true. But what environmentalist pressure groups always fail to mention is that it has been climbing by the same percentage rate since the early 1800’s – long before the planet was overrun with automobiles and heavy industry with the exception of the early 1960’s where it levelled off and stabilised for a while. I am of the opinion that whilst it is certain that we as a race aren’t doing the climate any favours – we aren’t damaging it to the extent that is portrayed in the media as well. Rather that, for the most part, the differences we are experiencing are more to do with the planet’s 40 millennia cycle of full climactic change.

Indeed many of the measures we take to try and combat our negative effects seam to backfire on a regular basis such as planting renewable forests of trees that often produce more greenhouse gases than they do oxygen because we plant the wrong species or encouraging the use of ‘greener’ diesel fuels in our cars because they have lower sulphur emissions but as anyone who has driven behind one will tell you they churn out masses of carbon based pollution. We focus all this attention on cars whilst the animals we breed for food produce more carbon dioxide annually into the atmosphere than cars by a huge percentage.

There are obviously major things that we have done to stir things up like the ozone depletion over the poles but that is a virtually unrelated issue to greenhouse effect arguments and these things are a worry to be sure but I find myself increasingly curious with this issue as to how much of it is a real cause for concern or how much of it is sabre rattling from our nanny state masters? I would be interested to hear your views on the matter…..

A book I need to get - Lomborg, Bjorn - The Skeptical Environmentalist

OKay, my 2 cents: Firstly, I think it's too easy just to say that climate change is a result of a natural cycle, and is really just an excuse that developing nations and big companies use for doing nothing about it. Sure, it could be the case but we have no evidence of the fact, and certainly not that it should be happening at such a rapid pace. In this case I think we shoud go by the old slogan, "Better to be safe than sorry". If the environmentalists are proven wrong later, we can all look smug and point and say "Told you so!". I can't really see any negative side effects of reducing pollution, making cleaner engines, planting more trees, using less water etc. except perhaps some short term economic costs, but even if it doesn't fix the problem of climate change it would still be worth it in the long run. It's rather pathetic that some western countries (like Australia) whinge about the cost rather than getting on with it... it makes me sick that whilst Germany now derives a large percentage of their power from solar energy, we sit here in the most sun drenched continent on earth continuing to dig coal out of the dirt and whine that it would cost too much to do anything else... if they can do it in chilly old Europe, why not here?
*ahem* Second, whilst I agree 100% with you that the correct research needs to be done to make sure that the steps taken are the right ones, there have been steps taken in the right directions (for example, there are new hi tech diesel engines which use emissions filters to ensure that they really do put out less polution). It's really up to us and (unfortunately) governments to make sure wise choices are made, rather than taking an easy option which looks or sounds good but makes no real change for good, or taking bad advice. In the end, I think the old, simple ideas like driving less, usiing public transport (or walking, god forbid), using less water (I realise, BTW, that this won't help globabl warming in any way, but it's still a good idea anyway :-), buying products that use less packaging/bleaching etc. is the easiest way to go (after all, let's be realistic, not too many of us can afford to rush out and replace our vehicle with the latest low emmision model). It's also very important that we are aware of the issue and not just dismiss it as a problem for future generations to worry about... so thanks for bringing it up Phil :-)

I completely agree with you about wasting natural and renewable energy sources - Ive visited Australia a lot and i picked up quite quickly how few people have something as simple as solar water heaters to save energy. and your right - the better safe than sorry route is always good - just so long as we dont mess that up too :-)

The 40 millennia cycle certainly is quite a contentious and relatively new player in the climate debate and it can certainly be verified by geological and astronomical evidence as to its existence and regularity as can the centuries old temperature rises. The grey areas appear because there is insufficient data from ‘modern’ sources to correlate some kind of pattern. It is certain that mankind has experienced this cycle on many occasions already and will do so again. Whether that be in due course as nature intended or sooner than expected by our own hand, time will tell. One thing is for certain – for all our self importance and technology, we are unable to affect the ‘wobble’ in the earth’s orbit that creates climactic change – also known as the precession of equinoxes so whether we like it or not – big changes will come. The last recorded ice age ended ten thousand years ago so we are now in the interglacial phase of the cycle which you could take as meaning things are inevitably going to get a lot hotter before they start getting cool again :-)

Now for my 2 cents! If I remember right the last time this happened was around 40.000 years ago, which would fall into the theory that Phil is talking about! But you would have to admit that some of the progression would be caused by the excessive amounts of ozone depletion caused by the excessive amount of Co2 admissions into the air. I micro wave energy is allowed to inter at a higher rate then it can escape that would be a problem. There for the rise in temperature. But what I am noticing is more rain and cooler temperatures. Now the rain issue would fall under the green house affect principle, but the cooler temperatures would not. I am noticing in our area of California, is that summers are coming later and winters are not really hitting until mid to late January and running into late march and early April. So some explain that to me?

Send your rain to us.. we havent had any good rain for years and we are actually running out of water where i live.. winter? whats winter? our winter is now about 2 days of the season where it has a cold morning or night when a few years ago you would get a few weeks of cold wet weather.. where i live the river and creeks used to flood every year now the creeks are dry and the river is under half full... so yes the climate has changed, and the politicians sit here and whine about how we are running out of water but do absolutely nothing to come up with a solution..

I don’t know Clayton but I’m sure there will be some data to be found on the web relevant to your area. Global land and ocean temperatures are generally taken as an average but as with most things in nature anomalies will occur. if I had to take a guess id say it may have something to do with facing the largest expanse of water on the planet that’s also home to the freakiest weather system on the planet :-)

Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Check out what is happening in Africa right now (Continental split).

Check out both poles and see the melting rate.

Check out Alaska and see the perma frost melting rate and methane gas release.

Check out the weather anywhere.

Check out current pollution levels.

Check out the wars and rumours of wars.

Check out new pestilences.

Check out the famines in the world.

Check out what's happening in the U.S.

Check out the record number of hurricanes.

Check out the increase and intensity of Tornadoes.

Check out the increase and intensity of earthquakes.

Check out the increase of volcanic eruptions...I have been in two myself.

Check out the record heat waves.

Revelation 16:9 And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

Check it all out.

Freakiest, Darn Phil it is snowing in Santa Barbera. That's stange indeed.

I just finished reading that carbon dioxide levels in the air are at all time high levels. Carbon Dioxide is a major Greenhouse gas.

NOAA - Carbon Dioxide
Rises To Record Level In Air

It will get cold before it get's warm. You have to realise that the over growth of cloud will first cause a drop in temp and then it will climb in temp.

That's the common belief but a greenhouse is warm. That last verse above states that at a certain time it will be so hot that men will blaspheme God because of the heat. How hot did it get in Las Vegas last year? 118 or something like that. Arizona maybe even hotter. It can get to 110 here. All seems normal yet we are seeing record high temperatures all the time now. Seems God may be right. If it gets cold then I guess we can discount what God said and He is just kidding us. But I wouldn't get a loan on the mortgage to bet on it if I were you.

There is a plan that certain men are putting into practice and aiding and abetting global warming. A master plan leading ultimately to a global government. God has mentioned this global government and who would head it. He also said that this persons kingdom would be in darkness. Any ideas what would cause that?

Here is a helpful resource for my country I found a while ago. Makes the decision for a new car fairly straightforward in terms of environmental impact. I imagine there are similar sites for other countries.

I wouldn’t have said it were appropriate in this instance to try and attach some religious symbolism or significance to what is, in essence, a regularly occurring event that has happened many, many times in man’s history and potentially as many as over a hundred thousand times already in the earth’s history as a celestial body. There is no proof in any archaeological record that a naturally occurring ice age cycle has precipitated any extinction level events, and indeed man – in the term of man as homo sapiens - has survived as many as six ice ages already.

Continental plates are constantly shifting and moving, polar regions haven’t always been ice – indeed fossil records in the poles show that at one point in the earths history they were actually lush tropical forests that covered the whole area, wars are far less prevalent now than at any other time in history and are still fought for the same reasons, greed or one religion trying to impose its belief set on another’s. Per capita to the global population, pestilence and famine are no where near as widespread as they were in biblical times. Volcanic activity has not significantly increased in the last two hundred years – the reporting and cataloguing of it has though – this becomes immediately more apparent when you see charts for the last century at the periods covering the two world wars where volcanic activity apparently all but stopped. This is of course nonsense – it is just that people had other things to worry about than report volcanic activity. With some extremely rare exceptions such as the Yellowstone super caldera there are no volcanoes on the planet capable of creating a sustained adverse effect on the earth’s atmosphere. Earthquakes are a regularly occurring event due to the fluctuation of the earths structure however they are no more prevalent now than they ever have been and the magnitude average is around 3 less than it was from when records were first kept five centuries ago when large quakes would regularly kill up to a million people at a time even without the modern day dangers of collapsing buildings. As most other climactic records only date back to the early 1800’s it is hard to say for sure if this is the hottest the planet has been but studying the plant and animal fossil record it would be highly doubtful.

My point is that it is (for lack of better term) a "religious" matter. I don't like "religion" look up the definition, it's man made. God isn't. We are not talking about records and past data. Look what's happening and it's worsening. Let me step out on the prophetic balcony for a moment and tell you something. It will get worse...far worse. Watch and see then mark my words. God said it will and it will...and man will not prevent it. It has begun and you are seeing it start. A privilaged generation of a sort, depending upon how you look at it. I would love to be wrong in one sense but I know I'm not. So what did God say?

Jesus (God in the flesh) was asked by His disciples what would be the signs of the end? I won't go through the leading verses (unless you ask) but it comes down to this verse:

Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

So what will this tribulation be? You are seeing the beginnings of it. As I said it will get worse and worse. In fact so bad God said:

Matthew 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

There will no doubt be a nuclear war (Iran? Prophetically yes.) which will add so much debris and radiation into the atmosphere that it will far worsen current conditions. They are using depleted uraniun in weapons in Iraq and have been since Desert Storm and Kosovo of which the radiation has become measurable over Great Britain and Europe. Then there is a place that will be totally destroyed in one fell swoop by fire, again probably by an all out nuclear strike. I have the details on my website. Now you can begin to see the implications and the truth of what is about to come upon the earth.

You can think me crazy or even insane it doesn't matter to me, I have heard it all over the years. It just bounces off me because what I said years ago is happening now and I know this is just the start. I'm not a preacher so don't think I'm trying to rush you off to church, I'm just a messenger. I could link more scripture to this in support but I gotta go eat, I try not to pass up a meal.

of course it will get worse - it always does in every cycle - thats the nature of the thing.

Ummm, I don't see how you can claim god isn't an invention of man. IMO it is. These predictions of yours are no different from the doom and gloom that soothsayers from all periods of history have said... if you keep saying things are going to get bad all the time your bound to be right eventually... people said the black plague would be the end of the world... that it was gods punishment etc and that man couldn't prevent it and only faith would save them... but it wasn't praying that saved mankind, it was science and medicine. Mankind had to save itself. I don't think you're crazy or insane, but I don't believe you're right either... environmentalists were saying that things like this were going to happen back in the eighties, they were right too but I don't consider that to be evidence that they are divine messengers, or even that they will be right about everything else. No one can predict the future perfectly. Everyone has different opinions and sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are wrong. I don't know what else to say except that I wish this thread could remain a scientific discussion of the issue at hand rather than a religious debate (or a god debate, if you don't want me to use that term).

I think that in view of how theological comments always escalate into dogmatic and pointless arguments on these boards it would be better to keep focused on the original question in so much as discussing whether we as a species are having as much impact on the climate as we are lead to believe and is it instead more to do with naturally occurring phenomena. It’s probably for the best all round as it avoids the usual acrimony.

No...I mean worse...like in terrible.

Thats what I had assumed :-)

We are focused on the subject, you just don't like what I'm saying, and I don't blame you, it's not a pretty and soothing prognosis. I'm not off topic. I am right on it.

No God?

James 2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

So Phil, what if I said I don't like your secular view of things? Should we stop the discussion? Is my view taken from a different perspective any less valid than yours? We are not discussing religion or God it just happens that's where my perspective comes from yet you seem offended by that. I'm not offended by what you say because I understand why you say what you say. The true test will be time itself if none of it comes to pass you can have the joy of calling me a false prophet, maybe even skewer me. But what if I'm right?

It says in the bible that god is real?? Wow, that's a revelation. So much for my viewpoint.

I think what Phil is trying to say is that when he posted the topic he was more interested in a scientific discussion than a philosophical one. If you try to turn it into something else I don't think you should be upset when he tries to get it back on topic.

Sam you said: Ummm, I don't see how you can claim god isn't an invention of man. IMO it is.

I had something happen 30 years ago that changed my life in an instant. This event left no doubt that there is a God. I can assure you man did not invent God and if you look outside your camera lens you can see God all around you. I must admit that encounter scared the @$#% right out of me, I have never before or since been that terrified of anything. To you God does nor exist so He doesn't. He only exists to those who believ He is. That's why they call it faith.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Now I am off topic but I just wanted to answer Sam. But then this is an "offtopic" forum isn't it.

Sam,

As I said I am on topic, just from a different perspective. If you all agree why discuss. To prove how smart everyone is? If you think I should drop out of the discussion because I don't share your "scientific" opinions just say so...I have other things I can do.

Sorry, but the fact that you believe something doesn't make it so. I'm not going to say any more, not because I'm upset or anything but I have already debated this absolutely to death in this forum in the past... at one point I recall having an argument with someone who claimed that dinosaur skeletons were not real and were pieced together from gorrilla bones by chinese scientists as a conspiracy just to swindle people who believed in creationism... or something like that. My point is that these type of debates really are pointless in my eyes and as Phil mentioned tend to turn into "dogmatic and pointless arguements". We'll just have to accept that we aren't going to convince each other and leave it at that (or at least, that's what I am going to do). Signing off...

Sam you said: It says in the bible that god is real?? Wow, that's a revelation. So much for my viewpoint.

The very first verse in the Bible:

Genesis 1: 1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Now who is more real? You or God?

I'll drop out too. I have said what I have to. I'm not seeking confrontation. To those offended ....get over it.

your slightly melodramatic & dogmatic responses are exatly why I was anxious this thread should not be hijacked into another pointless theological argument.

I dropped out what more do you need?

The past eighteen months certainly has seen a benchmark series of events in the world’s climates with extremes of heat, storms, cold and precipitation. It has become obvious even to an everyday observer that things certainly not as they used to be. Here in the UK, winters seam to last longer but are not nearly as severe as they were say, 20-30 years ago. Summertime has also brought much more regular hot weather, occasionally with temperatures reaching levels more appropriate to tropical climates.

Things are definitely changing progressively and if there is one thing that has become painfully obvious over the last year is how ill prepared the powers that be in government are to react to these changes. In the spirit of the better safe than sorry route, steps should be taken to minimise the impact we have on our climate and the impact it has back on us. Domestic fuel suppliers are using the turmoil to mask what is in essence blatant racketeering and should be regulated from a government level to prevent them from artificially manipulating prices and supply to line their pockets. In the UK domestic fuel prices have trebled over the last three years and were recently put up again by 25% with the gas companies pleading poverty and saying they are virtually selling their fuel at a loss. This didn’t prevent them though from posting a massive hike in profits for 2005 – up to £1.5 billion ($2.62 billion) for just one of the suppliers. Whichever way you swing it – that isn’t exactly surviving on a shoestring is it?

As Sam pointed out we need cleaner more sustainable and self sufficient energy sources at an individual level. Events are in motion in mother nature and there is nothing we can do to prevent it so our efforts should perhaps be more focussed on figuring out how to weather the storm without potentially aggravating the situation.

This will be briefish because I'm running out the door of work and off for the weekend. Please don't take offense if one of my pts is a lil sharp or slightly incoherent, I wanted to jump in here before I lost track of the things I wanted to say.

1) Yes… every single gas company has taken advantage of the "shortages" to post record profits. One company… I think it was Exxon or Mobil, posted profits for 4th quarter last year equal to their entire profits for the other 3 quarters.

2) I agree with Sam, we as a species are extremely wasteful and do more damage to the environment than any other species that I know of. We should be taking whatever steps we can to limit this, both personally and by public outcry. It's really funny that this came up now, because recently, completely randomly, I started thinking about grocery stores. While I am by no means an animal rights activist, the idea that alot of meat spoils and is thrown out so that the store can always be stocked for our convenience and in the name of profit consequently means there are alot of animals being killed for essentially no reason is somewhat horrifying to me. It's just one example, but when you think about it, I think it's fairly representative of how comfortable our society has become with it's conveniences while ignoring the consequences/results of them. *sigh* If I start thinking about it, I might have to go become a tree hugger. Friggin bark is so scratchy though!

3) There are shorter cycles than the 40 millenium one. According to my earth science teacher mom, about every 12-15 years we go through a period of colder winters, and then back again. Phil has some excellent points about what's happened as opposed to what's recorded history. We should be paying more attention to the difference of changes and look around and see what technology/practices we may have introduced during that time to affect it. Sometimes, we didn't do anything, it's simply the way things evolve/are. Sometimes we did, and we should be doing everything in our power to fix it.

4) Have you ever noticed how almost every time we try to find our way around something, it backfires, and the results are frequently worse than what we were trying to get away from? So much food uses High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of sugar because it supposedly wouldn't be absorbed into our system as easily and was theoretically a safer/less fattening sweetener. The fact that it was also possible to use less of it was just an added "bonus" for the manufacturers. New studies show that HFCS is leading to disastrous consequences. see here. Unfortunately, I don't have time to find the link to the medical journals but if somebody would be kind enough to find and link them, I'll thank ya on Sunday when I'm back.

5) Jerry, if you're going to claim that you don't believe in religion, only god, because religion is manmade, then you better stop trying to demonstrate your points by quoting a book put out by a bunch of hypocritical philandering murdering bastards to control the rest of the populace. Not only have they changed the rules of the game over and over to suit their own desires, but the book you're quoting isn't even translated properly. ex: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" before the garbled translation read "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live". Too bad about all those women in Salem, huh?

Cat - mom is correct the main cycle I was referring to is regarded as the complete one or the full 'wobble' if you like but it is subdivided into many other event rotations.

Many people view the full and complete cycle as the planet doing a ‘reboot’ and starting from scratch which is a pretty good analogy. There’s obviously change afoot, but it bugs me when panic mongering ensues about events that are perfectly normal. Take for instance glacial retreat, alarmists shout about what a natural disaster it is that the ancient glaciers are disappearing. Its not a disaster – that’s what they are supposed to do isn’t it? They advance through the land carving out the dramatic valleys, canyons and landscapes we see today and retreat to reveal there handiwork. It is such a long process though that we have never seen it happen before now.

Maybe we are experiencing the possible effect of the binary star that may or may not be out there. Which they now think is the sister star to ours but is a brown dwarf which completes it's rotation around our star every 25,000 years. And is very difficult to see and track. They feel that this is the reason for the warble and the possible polar shifts in our own planet that show up in the geological record of iron shift the igneous rocks and that of Uranus’s highly unusual excessive warble which can not yet be explained and is typical of a planetary system that has stars that rotate around each other. They feel that this will cause climatic changes and unusual weather patterns.

Your talking about the Epsilon Indi triple star system that has been discovered close (well close by interstellar distances) to our own system. Its quite a complex set up as there is a pair of brown dwarf stars acting as a binary pair and they in turn orbit another more regular star. Both brown dwarfs are failed stars, with not enough mass to generate the thermonuclear fusion that powers the Sun and are hard to find because they emit virtually no light. They are typically at least 30 times as massive as Jupiter though so will still generate significant gravitational forces especially if all three were in alignment.

I think once the elliptical orbits and ‘wobbles’ of our solar system planets was established it was only a matter of time before the cause of this was discovered and these three stars certainly appear to be a viable candidate. Multiple star systems aren’t particularly rare but one composed mostly of brown dwarfs like this are.

It's news like this that really gets me curious as to exactly how much environmentalist groups actually know about the environment. Glaciers are not supposed to be permanent fixtures and fittings - they advance over time and then receed to leave new valleys and assorted other geological features. Its almost as ludicrous as saying the wind should be banned as it's eroding the Rockies...

Well I am a granola eating, tree hugging neo hippie. That said...there are certain things that I believe as humans we have done to royally FUBAR our world...but...there is also evidence of changes made at regular intervals...we've been through a few ice ages in our gazillion years that Earth has been here (ok...not a gazillion, but many many years). I am a big fan of using solar energy when possible. I am looking into buying a diesel so that I can convert it to run on cooking oil (bio-diesel), which does burn cleaner and leaves a yummy french fry scent behind. I try to compost and recycle and all that. Unfortunately though, this world is bigger than just me, and my work alone won't make too much of a dent, but it makes me feel better. In 2005 the world had more hurricanes than any other time on written record, and 2006 is predicted to be bigger and badder. I believe that SOME of this is from us being jackasses to our planet, but not all of it. If you want to look at it in a biblical/spiritual manner, perhaps God is pissed off because we are trashing the planet...or...perhaps we are getting ready to have another change in our planet and a new evolutionary period...be it another ice age or whatever. I am mostly saddened by the cutting down of the rainforrests. In the amazon area alone, there have been hundreds plants that have been used as a basis for disease cures...we cut down a few trees, we kill the habitat. Everything has its chain. The grubs that live in the trees feed the birds who feed the bigger animals and so on...not to mention the tree itself may be the next cure for cancer or AIDS. Do we replace it with an EXACT tree? No. So that ecosystem is destroyed. Enough with my tree-hugging though...I cannot give a direct answer as I believe there are many many factors which are coming into play. So for me, I just try to advocate to be as "nice" and "gentle" as possible to the planet. But the Earth will do what needs to be done to renew...and we as humans are really very bold to think that we can create something to survive it. Perhaps in time we can, but history has shown that when Mother Earth is fed up, only the strongest will survive her makeover. The dinosaurs certainly weren't strong enough.

That pretty much sums it up Jenn, for all mans conceit and arrogance, when the planet decided it’s time to reboot we would be powerless to stop the change and would instead be reduced to hiding in order to try and ride out the storm. Indeed, far more prescient natural catastrophes loom large before an ice age ever returns to drive us all south way off in the future. Ironically, for all its current might and imperialism, the USA hangs on the most precarious of knife edges and potentially could face obliteration from a variety of sources. A pincer movement of natural disasters threatens it like no other country with the Yellowstone super caldera at the heart of it all. A super volcanic eruption is approximately twenty thousand years overdue there and geologists believe that could in turn trigger the equally dangerous breach of the San Andreas fault. The eastern sea board may also be threatened by a volcano although this time the mountain in question is thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic. That all depends on which group of geologists turn out to be correct. Some say the Cumbre Vieja volcano will collapse gradually after aeons of continual activity, if that is the case then all will be peachy. The other camp however believe that Vieja has become so weak and brittle as result of its eruptions it could suffer a massive flank failure and literally half of it could drop into the ocean in one fell swoop. Flank failures of island stratovolcanoes are extremely rare phenomena and none have occurred within recorded history, however a postulated, massive slope failure could trigger a mega tsunami large and fast enough to engulf the whole of the eastern seaboard of America. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the US government and the Canary Islands Tourist Board are siding with the first option – ignorance is bliss and all that.

Just on the bit you mentioned about god being angry because we are trashing our planet, Jenn... I think that there have been periods in history where our environmental record has, believe it or not, been at an even more dismal place than it is today. I have read that at the beginning of the industrial revolution, pollution in places like London were so bad that the whole city choked... people could barely see a few metres in front of them due to the apalling pollution levels. I'm sure there's information about this around... so we are actually doing better than we were. Of course the much larger population of the earth today means that we can produce much less polution per person and still produce more on a global scale.

Governments continue to make little or no effort to encourage green behaviour in their citizens. For all their grandiose statements they do in actuality very little to help. Our uber crooked regime here is a major case in point. Biofuel has started rolling out across filling stations recently which is all good as it’s a (relatively) clean fuel that provides more efficient power to your car and is primarily made from recycled waste products from the agricultural industry such as sugar beet. So what does our delightful parliament do to encourage its use? Slap the same extortionate taxation duty on it (70-80%) as regular gasoline. As an additional hypocritical slap in the face they recently announced that they would install renewable energy generation devices such as wind turbines and solar panel solutions to provide free energy on houses of people capable of working but who are claiming state unemployment benefits but not on the houses of people on benefits for the elderly or infirmed. Nice.

Bizarrely, the latest report from the UN bodies monitoring global warming report that our efforts to create a cleaner atmosphere appear to be increasing global warming. The air quality globally has improved significantly apparently over the past few years but this has in turn allowed more of the Sun's energy to reach the Earths surface creating warmer temperatures and a huge increase in water vapour in the atmosphere, amplifying weather systems and tropical storm fronts. See - you can’t do right for doing wrong after all :-)

Mother Nature is trying to sort it all out, but with all these new methods of curbing disease, the population continues to grow. Of course, it is another cycle. Whether good or bad, we will never know.