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Recent articles by Joshua Hart
Bristol to London by Quadricycle Nov 22 09 Benefit Gig - Black Cat occupied social centre - Friday 20th, Bath Nov 16 09 Letter to Sustrans Nov 08 09 Top Ten Bristol Transport Debacles bristol |
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opinion/analysis
 Friday November 14, 2008 00:55 by Joshua Hart
 A Tour Through the Hall of Horrors It just seems to keep getting worse. As residents of Bristol continue to suffer the effects of rising traffic levels and shoddy transport choices on their environment, health, and quality of life, our political leaders are scared stiff of appearing to be anti-car. Their paralysis, borne out of fear of intervening in society’s petrol addiction in any meaningful way- is preventing them doing anything to actually solve the problem. Instead, like a drug addict, we increase the dose to get the same high- we widen roads and build new car parks, hoping that it will make us forget our problems. Temporarily relieved, we wake up the next morning feeling worse than ever. Politicians talk green, but their actions are digging us deeper into the gaping black hole of car dependence and climate catastrophe every day.
Like it or not, it seems that the forces of darkness have decided that if they stand any chance of launching their schemes to increase road and airport capacity, they better do it now, and they better force them through all together before the twin realities of peak oil and climate change reshape our transport landscape forever. This plan could divert and distract us, or it could end up backfiring on them, raising the hackles of a powerful new coalition of Bristolians who say enough is enough. |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5..........is the constant harping on about "Peak Oil" when alternatives such as Methane hydrate as well as yet more oil reserves being available.
And then we have Global Warming, or "Climate change" as the believers like to call it so they can blame anything and everything on "Man", that is apparently on holiday for ten years because the reality of Global temperatures are not following the nice little models that have been fabricated out of a desire by some to truly believe that the "sky is falling".
Is it going to get ugly?
Only for those who try to further the lie.
The rest of us will deal with the issue of pollution and dwindling oil by moving forward - not running around proclaiming the end of the world and saying things like "it is going to get ugly"
It isn't - but change is painful for some - especially those that want a particular version of the world despite all the evidence to the contrary. Even the Al Gore Polar Bear nonsense is now out in the open:-
..................
"Pictures of exhausted and emaciated polar bears clinging forlornly to shrinking ice floes have become icons of the global movement to halt climate change. Populations are in sharp decline, a trend that environmentalists blame on the shrinking of their sea ice habitats because of man-made global warming. However critics of the spin say that the global polar bear population, at 25,000, is far from extinction and question the human hand in their decline".
"Listing an animal under the Endangered Species Act compels the US Government to protect it. If the polar bear were to be added to the list, it would create an extraordinary political and environmental precedent."
Yes, it would be an extraordinary precedent: to list a species at a point when its population is actively and massively increasing would be a somewhat perverse precedent, would it not?
For, as EU census has continually pointed out, the polar bear population is increasing—and significantly.
A survey of the animals' numbers in Canada's eastern Arctic has revealed that they are thriving, not declining, because of mankind's interference in the environment.
In the Davis Strait area, a 140,000-square kilometre region, the polar bear population has grown from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today.
"There aren't just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears," said Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist who has spent 20 years studying the animals.
As the EU census also pointed out, that classic images of the polar bears clinging to an ice outcrop—most memorably used by Al Gore—was a classic issue of framing. Not only that but, with typical enviro-loon dishonesty, the picture was stolen from the original photographer.
The picture, wrongly credited to Dan Crosbie, an ice observer specialist for the Canadian Ice Service, was actually taken by Amanda Byrd while she was on a university-related research cruise in August of 2004, a time of year when the fringe of the Arctic ice cap normally melts. Byrd, a marine biology grad student at the time, was gathering zooplankton for a multi-year study of the Arctic Ocean.
Crosbie, who was also on the trip, pilfered the polar bear photo from a shared computer onboard the Canadian icebreaker where Ms. Byrd downloaded her snapshots; he saved it in his personal file. Several months later, Crosbie, who is known as an avid photographer, gave the photo to the Canadian Ice Service, which then allowed Environment Canada to use it as an illustration for an online magazine.
Today that photo, with credit given to photographer Dan Crosbie and the Canadian Ice Service, can be found all over the Internet, generally with the caption “Two polar bears are stranded on a chunk of melting ice”.
It’s a hoax, folks. The bears, which can swim distances of 100 miles and more, weren’t stranded; they were merely taking a break and watching the boat go by when a lady snapped their picture.
……………………..
But the "believers" would have you believe anything.
And that is ugly.
The Ugliest thing in my books is the small minded, selfish, unthinking, profit oriented, greedy polluters and consumers who seek to deny any problems their consumerist lifestyles cause the planet and life on earth generally.
THAT is the ugliest thing.
http://www.meteorologynews.com/2007/10/01/polar-bears-t...arms/
I'm wondering why anybody would wanna read a comment entitled 'whatever' ?
You don't have to read it - it is a link - you read that. My rather tired response was to the equally tired cliché of the previous response.
Sadly if some on BIM tried less hard at trying to be clever - we would all benefit.
Rather than any intelligent comment, just the same old, same old, same old - from a “believer” (probably the same one, given the wording and phrasing) who seems to like to post banal abuse.