Carlos

From the places that have tried requiring daytime dipped headlights, some find it works out with lower numbers of accidents overall, and some don't, but either way you can't get away from the fact you are making some things safer by making some other things more risky. I'd want to think very carefully about those implications before deciding that something should be mandatory. The automatic daytime running lights coming in from 2011 are a lot lower powered than dipped headlights are, and will (hopefully) avoid some of the negatives.

RoSPA's take - “RoSPA’s view is that if cars are fitted with Daytime Running Lights, then there is much concern that the conspicuity of other road users without DRL will suffer. The risk is that when drivers are making observations and looking out for other road users, that drivers will search for the DRL on other vehicles rather than surveying the whole scene and spotting vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians. “This is a serious concern as research has shown that ‘looked but failing to see’ errors contribute to 23 per cent of unimpaired drivers’ accidents during daylight, and a more recent report identified that 32 per cent of all accidents were caused when road users ‘failed to look properly’."

The suggestion was that less well lit things became harder for the driver to spot when mixed in with a stream of well lit cars. I'd personally prefer that people used lights when they were required and were thinking about the situation, rather than move to where there might be a perception of "the lights are on, there is nothing to worry about".

There seems to have been mixed results in the countries which have made daytime dipped lights mandatory, with some places having a drop in car to car damage accidents more than matched by an increase in motorcycle, cycle and pedestrian injury accidents.....

I usually go by this onehttp://www.sirimo.co.uk/2009/05/14/uk-photographers-rights-v2/ which refers to article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding privacy. Might be wrong, don't know, but it seems to be solid. In Scotland at least it sounds like the breach of a court order you mentioned would be in respect of a harassment charge.... not sure, heading off topic though - for the Sun photo there doesn't seem to be any legal breach.

I certainly don't approve of such a type of photography, but my understanding of the law is that: If the photograph is taken from a public place then, even if the person photographed is on private property, it is a legally obtainable photograph. I think it is usually judged on "expectation of privacy", so in the street you cannot expect privacy, inside your house you can....

Commercial street (from the cross to the parking below the fort)is closed to all traffic between 11:30 and 5(ish) except disabled badge holders - it's the enforcement bit that is the problem.......

So..... basically everybody gets irritated by anybody else not using the road exactly the same way they are?

Figure 70 here shows the contribution to the UKIP02 predicted sea level rise by various factors, with thermal expansion of seawater by far the biggest single one during this century. http://www.ukcip.org.uk/images/stories/Pub_pdfs/UKCIP02TechRep/UKCIP02_Ch6.pdf "The majority of sea-level rise by 2100 occurs due to thermal expansion of ocean water, with the melting of land ice in mountain glaciers and in the Greenland ice-sheet contributing smaller amounts. Over the next 100 years, it is thought that warmer temperatures and increased precipitation over Antarctica may actually result in a slight expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet, contributing to a fall in sea level of approximately the same magnitude as the contribution melting ice over Greenland makes to the rise in sea level."

Tide predictions from the Proudman institute, if you want to check for extremes at sailing times. http://www.pol.ac.uk/ntslf/tidalp.html

Confuse was maybe not the right word, but as is fairly common, the article is light on details and strong on a headline number. What was predicted? "6 feet". Well, 6 feet based on what assumptions and with what degree of certainty? If you say "a 50% confidence of a 4 to 6 feet rise by 2100, assuming the highest CO2 emission scenario" then you are saying something different than if you say "a 95% confidence of a sea level rise of at least 6 feet, regardless of feasible reductions in CO2 emissions", but both could well be reported as "6 feet".

Apologies, the sea level rise predictions are only for up to 2080, not 2100 as I said. http://www.ukcip.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=87&Itemid=300 I see the SIC flooding report has a look at some local effects based on that too. http://www.shetland.gov.uk/developmentplans/documents/4thBiennialFloodReport.pdf You'll note in the Times article it is other climate scientists who are questioning Stefan Rahmstorf's methodology? Also http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/mar/09/lomborg-climate-change. His predictions seems to be a direct extrapolation of sea level changes measured to date (likely equivalent to the IPPC high emissions scenario?) which might be the method to support if you feel computer modelling of climate changes is too prone to errors?

The sea rise figures I have seen in detail do not give a single simple answer "the sea will rise x feet", it's a band of probabilities, 95% likely the rise will be at least a, 50% likely the rise will be at least b, 5% likely....." etc etc. Then you have to consider which CO2 emissions projections you are working on, so there is another layer of unknowns on top of that. At some low % of possibility then of course 6 feet is possible, but what confidence limits were placed on that figure and what CO2 levels were used? The last official ones I have seen were more like 500mm by 2100 for the 50% probability and medium Co2 emmisions scenario. Although data coming out a month or so later suggested that might be an under estimate, it still only moved it up to 900mm. I understand that from reading the press it can be very confusing, because they are not usually very good at mentioning any of the details, just the "feet", but the same "single" prediction will say 200mm to 800mm rise depending which scenarios you choose. Again, there are lots of unknowns, the science outlines those, and then it becomes a political decision on how to balance the risks.

Some interesting reading in this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

Just ask Google "-9C in F" http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=-9C+in+F

You might expect most winters a bit warmer and wetter, but I'm not convinced that we can say much more with any confidence. The poles are expected to warm more than the tropics.... so that's maybe a bit warmer for us, but also less temperature gradient north-south.... so what effect does that have on jetstreams..... make instabilities more likely? Politicians want firm predictions on localised effects to be able to plan for effects on infrastructure, but there are a lot of uncertainties that interact in complex ways, and that's before any changes in the systems we "understand". http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826543.700-poor-forecasting-undermines-climate-debate.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926692.800-editorial-better-climate-forecasts-will-bring-storms.html

When global temperatures go up, the only thing you can really say is that there is more energy knocking about in the climate. How that effects weather on small scale times and sizes is hard to guess at. The cold weather at the moment is not because the average temperature is colder than usual, it's because the jet stream has a knot in it that is sending the warm westerly weather systems south and pulling in cold air from the north and east. The one thing you could make a fair guess at is that higher global temperatures would make some changes in the weather, and a lot of things worldwide are pretty much based around just getting the usual kind of weather, and do not cope well with anything unexpected......

Absolutely, it's a much wider picture than just an "imported = bad, UK = good" arguement.

Didn't somebody come up with some numbers showing that flying in produce could be a better option than running heated greenhouses etc to produce them locally?

Insurance bond against future reinstatement / decommissioning? http://guarantee.eulerhermes.co.uk/en/reinstatement-bonds/reinstatement-bonds.html

Loganair conditions are different from Flybe conditions Excess Baggage If you have baggage in excess of your free allowance, it will only be accepted if space is available at a charge of £10, the maximum any 1 bag can weigh is 30kgs. Any additional pieces of luggage will be charged at £10. http://www.loganair.co.uk/service-info/flybe/baggage

Should be just a single £10 charge for a bag between 20 and 32kg (it is still 32 isn't it?) Got charged £10 each for a couple of bike boxes at about 23kg...... but also got charged £10 for a bike box at 19kg......

Pretty much everybody has accepted that the next few years will not show much if any warming as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation swings into a cooling mode for a while. I'd be delighted if there was more cooling than predicted even with that assumption, as it would suggest a feedback process that was acting against warming. Unfortunately most of the unexpected feedbacks so far seem to be in the other direction, forcing greater warming, so some good news would be welcome, as otherwise I don't see the political backing to take enough action soon enough if the current predictions are accurate.

If it would have been -12.4C with less CO2?

To clarify:- The ferry terminal location is being assessed under the STAG guidance, which is designed to look at value for money on Transport projects. If you follow that to the letter it should come out against the combined harbour / terminal scheme, as it is not the cheapest way of getting a new ferry terminal. Now there are obviously other benefits to the harbour development, to existing businesses, to possibly letting new businesses start up, to supporting the community and keeping jobs outside Lerwick and so on. At some point you will need to make a judgement if those benefits are worth the extra money. Then comes the question of funding, and if the extra money for commercial benefits can be found in time to build the terminal on schedule, or if not, do you split the schemes at extra construction costs to get the benefits of the new terminal earlier, or do you delay the terminal to do everything at once for less overall cost. All through it you have to weigh up hard costs / benefits, more speculative costs / benefits, and then the other subjective effects, but again I think they should be weighed up, and not just done on assumptions.