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Everything posted by ArabiaTerra
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If someone is earning £53/week, then they would be eligible for housing and council tax benefit, though I doubt it would cover the full amount. But even if it did, then you would still struggle. I've had a summer job over the last couple of years so I was claiming jobseekers during the winter. This was around £65/week plus council tax* and housing benefit. I live in a council bedsit** so my electricity bill is quite low as I only have to heat the one room. Even so, in the depths of winter I was really struggling to pay for electric as well as food. (There was a couple of times I went for 24 hours or so with no power, cooking and making tea on a camping stove and using a couple of led torches for lighting, when my electric ran out a day before my next dole cheque came through.) Luckily I didn't have any large unexpected expenses such as a fridge/freezer or cooker failure but if I had, I would have been buggered, as I did not have a penny left over at the end of the week. It was tough. I have a year round job now (unfortunately not full time yet), so things are a little easier, but by no means comfortable. *It should be noted that council tax benefit does not cover the water part of the charge, so even if you qualify for full benefit, you still get a bill. **Bedroom tax? I don't have a bedroom! Where's my rebate?
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Bedroom tax/ universal payment
ArabiaTerra replied to dead mans hand's topic in National & International News
Define "living wages". -
Signed the petition.
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Climate Change & Global Warming
ArabiaTerra replied to Atomic's topic in National & International News
I'm not quite following you here. Could you be a bit more specific about what you're looking for? The graph I posted above was showing the difference in usage of the terms "Climate Change" and "Global Warming" over the last 30 years or so. GW-HITS refers to Global Warming and CC-HITS refers to Climate Change. -
Climate Change & Global Warming
ArabiaTerra replied to Atomic's topic in National & International News
You know, you're absolutely right. It is very insulting to all the honest holocaust deniers out there to even consider comparing them to the right-wing, fascist, gutter-slime running the climate change denial industry. After all, the holocaust deniers are just a bunch of harmless old men with some funny ideas about history, while the climate-change deniers are purposely and deliberately working for the end of civilisation and the deaths of billions. There's really no comparison. I consider myself suitably chastised. [/sarcasm] -
Climate Change & Global Warming
ArabiaTerra replied to Atomic's topic in National & International News
In books: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=global+warming%2Cclimate+change&year_start=1970&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3 And in the scientific literature: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/cc_vs_gw.GIF -
http://www.monbiot.com/2013/03/25/line-of-battle/
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Climate Change & Global Warming
ArabiaTerra replied to Atomic's topic in National & International News
Actually this is one of the climate myths or zombie lies* (if you prefer) that is constantly regurgitated by the deniers. The reality is that the two terms have been used interchangeably since the 70's, with Climate Change being used almost exclusively before that. The only person to advocate for a change in terminology was Frank Luntz, a republican political strategist working for the Bush regime, hardly an environmental extremist. Source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm *Zombie Lie:- A lie told by deniers which refuses to die no matter how many times it is killed by the truth. -
It's actually closer to one per fortnight by my reckoning. I showed you verifiable back up for this a couple of years ago, unless you don't trust the IEA. Here it is again http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/CNELEC.pdf Taking a capacity factor of 50% and an average of 2.8GW capacity per station I get a rate of approx 0.44 new stations per week over that 10 year period. (edit: the 10 year period from 1999 until 2009) This of course is a lie. 7-8 per week is around 400 per year that means over the same 10 year period they have closed around 4000 coal fired power stations, more than all the coal power stations in existence on this planet. Why do you insist on repeating this palpable nonsense? Actually, I don't think I've ever made that claim before on Shetlink (though I could be wrong). I also indicated that I didn't have any back-up for the claim, it's just something I read somewhere. And when I did go looking the only thing I could find was this: Which while it doesn't back up the "7-8/week" claim, does indicate that not all of the new Chinese construction is extra capacity but rather it is replacing older, less efficient, plants. So, yes, I was wrong, but not completely wrong.
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And to put the Chinese coal-boom in perspective: http://quiet-environmentalist.com/yeah-but-china-builds-a-new-coal-plant-every-two-weeks/ http://grist.org/climate-energy/coal-and-china-bad-but-maybe-not-as-bad-as-you-think/
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Possibly. But in the meantime, it's been widely reported in the last couple of years that China's economy is expanding at such a rate - along with their demand for power - that they're opening a new coal-fired power station every week. Actually, that "one a week" claim was first made in the mid 00's, and I've never seen any verifiable back-up to the claim. It's also never mentioned that China is closing 7-8 inefficient, Mao-era, power stations a week. (this claim has as much back-up as the previous one.) They are building more than anyone else in the world. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/20/1744741/chinas-wind-power-production-increased-more-than-coal-power-did-for-first-time-ever-in-2012/ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-07/wind-power-market-rose-to-41-gigawatts-in-2011-led-by-china.html Edit: More on Chinese coal plant construction: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=China_and_coal#Coal_Plants
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After a slight false start, routing South on Shefa-2 returned just before 4 PM. Folk not using TalkTalk will probably not have noticed any change from business as usual. Cool, thanks for the feedback. I wonder if I'll get a rebate for the period of lost service?
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Aaaand we're back! http://www.speedtest.net/result/2601604468.png
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Never argue with idiots. They will drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
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No kidding! I don't even have a dialling tone. Phone dead, broadband dead, grrr. (Serves me right for gloating about what fantastic speeds I was getting) Posted from Dad's prehistoric Dell. Any idea how long it will take to fix?
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There's only one positive reason I can think of for labour backing this retrogressive change to the law: When they get back in after the next election, they can retrospectively go after the bonus-boys in the City, and the tories won't have a leg to stand on. (Hey, a guy can dream, ok?)
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Woops, I flagged this post as spam yesterday due to the spelling in the title, through, not threw. Sorry about that.
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It isn't about either/or, it's about one or both. If we don't build VE then we continue with the current arrangement: No new money coming in and just skimming the profits of our investment in the stock exchange. If we do build VE then most of our money stays in the stock exchange, plus we get an additional £20 million/year to spend or invest. What are the current known risks? VE as planned will be profitable with the current subsidy regime. Now you could speculate that the subsidies might end, but that would put every existing windfarm in the country out of business, wasting billions of investment and costing thousands of jobs and it would mean kissing any chance of the UK meeting it's legal obligations on carbon reduction goodbye. That's just not going to happen. What other risks are there? The wind resource in Shetland is proven. The technology is proven. Glad you mentioned the peat. As you can see below, the peat in "windmill country" is in an awful state. http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r60/ArabiaTerra/421842_479482058767528_1514014671_n_zps89ba2adb.jpg http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r60/ArabiaTerra/598657_479481562100911_1496770127_n_zps8a890c8f.jpg http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r60/ArabiaTerra/487933_479480708767663_136393077_n_zps293673f6.jpg http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r60/ArabiaTerra/576632_479480548767679_921421365_n_zps7c0b7565.jpg http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r60/ArabiaTerra/556907_479480358767698_1446970836_n_zpsa447b936.jpg
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JGHR, what is your opinion on climate change?
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My whole point in that last rant was that historical trends are not a reliable indicator of what will happen in the future. The whole basis of our economy (cheap and easy access to energy via fossil fuels) is crumbling. Now I'm not saying that we won't be able to reconfigure things to keep civilisation as we know it running, in fact that's the very basis of my argument. But that reconfiguration will involve replacing our power sources with carbon free power, of which VE is an example. There are two possible scenarios here. 1. We continue subsidising renewables until they reach grid parity and successfully transition our economy to a sustainable system. In this scenario windfarm subsidies continue and VE works out as predicted. 2. We don't. Civilisation falls and a few rusty windturbines on the hills will be the least of our problems. That's pretty much what it boils down to. Take your pick.
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It's certainly been worth it for me. My speed went up by 300% and my price dropped by 60% Have you been upgraded yet, Ghostie? One way to tell is to run a Speedtest check. If your upload speed has increased from the ADSL max of 0.35 to around 0.75ish then you have been. If not, then start hassling your ISP.
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Well I suppose it depends on what you mean by guaranteed. In fact its a bit like global temperatures. There is no guarantee that they will continue to increase, yet you seem perfectly happy to accept that they will based on historical data and current accepted analysis. Stock market returns, have increased in the long term over the entire history of the market and accepted analysis indicates that they will continue to do so. There has always been ups and downs, the graph is not a straight line, but the trend, as they say, is upwards. Why would you deny that this is likely to continue? The rise in global temperatures are caused by the normal operation of the laws of physics. You don't argue with the laws of physics. The only way in which this rise will stop is if we find a way to substantially reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Given that we are currently pouring 30 billion tonnes of additional carbon into the atmosphere each year, I don't see a reduction happening any time soon. The best we can hope for is to slow and eventually eliminate the increase, but at the level of current efforts, even this will take decades. And remember, there is a thirty to forty year lag between CO2 being emitted and it's full effects being felt, so even if we completely decarbonised by 2020, temperatures wouldn't stop rising until 2050-2060, and that's assuming that we didn't de-stabilise any of the natural carbon sinks like the rainforest, tundra, temperate forests and the oceans (all of which are showing signs of de-stabilisation already). Markets, on the other hand, are human inventions and our current economy is based on the infinite growth powered by abundant cheap energy model. Unfortunately, the abundant cheap energy is running out and infinite growth is impossible. I accept one (global warming) and deny the other (infinite market growth) because one is based on the laws of physics, while the other is impossible. Please explain to me how infinite growth can continue on a finite planet without completely trashing it? Ahem, Burradale. Just because the markets have recovered in the past does not guarantee they will do so in the future. The problem is this: Leaving aside the issue of global warming for the moment, up until around 2005 each year the amount of new oil discovered was greater than the amount lost by the exhaustion of existing fields. Thus the global oil supply grew each year and demand grew alongside it. In 2005 this stopped. We were no longer discovering enough new oil to replace the exhausted fields. This didn't immediately affect the economy as there was a lot of slack in the system, but by 2008 everything was running flat out to satisfy demand. But demand continued to rise. So the oil price shot up, the speculators moved in, drove it even higher and we had the price spike which peaked around $147/barrel. This caused a spike in fuel prices, especially in the US, which led to a whole swathe of small and medium sized businesses going bankrupt or downsizing. This caused a rise in unemployment. These newly unemployed held mortgages which they could no longer afford the repayments on, and a whole lot of previously good debt became bad debt. And down came the financial system built on this debt. So what have we done since to decouple our economy from the oil price? Practically nothing. Sure, everything is now a bit more efficient, but that's just tinkering round the edges. Our economy is just as dependent on oil as it was last time around. So what will happen when the recovery gets going? Demand for oil will start rising again, the oil price will spike again and bring it all crashing down again. Another recession. After that, maybe we'll get the message. Peak oil. It's happening now. This means the markets are no longer a safe place to park the CT money On the other hand, there will always be demand for electricity, and climate change is real so carbon taxes/levies/surcharges/whatever are only going to get bigger. This makes getting into carbon free power generation look like a pretty smart move. Agreed, so why do you blindly deny the reality that our whole economic system is based on an ultimately unsustainable model which is creaking at the seams. That we need a fundamental re-balancing of our whole economic model. That the fossil fuel powered good times are over. Why do you deny these things?
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Maybe not, but with labour the poor got shafted as a by-product of poorly thought out and implemented policies and an excess of sucking up to the rich and the city. Whereas with the tories, shafting the poor seems to be the primary objective of government. There's a big difference.
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the private prison system needs YOU!
ArabiaTerra replied to Distortio's topic in TV, Film, Arts and Literature
I don't have a link handy, but there was a story going around last year about a judge in some po-dunk town in the Southern USA who was taking back-handers from the local private prison management to give youngsters custodial sentences instead of fines/community service for trivial offences. -
Nope, haven't seen it. I wouldn't use the Sun to wipe my arse if I was caught short in a sandpaper factory.