back to article Scientists get bogged down about climate change

It turns out that digging the channel tunnel was good for more that just a high speed rail link with the rest of Europe: it might help us understand one of the many interconnected strands of our planet's ecosystem and climate. During the (very slow) excavations on the British side of the tunnel, the engineers dug up a 55 …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ok, but....

    ...given the lack of cars 55 million years ago, what triggered this positive feedback cycle? There's something missing from the theory I think

  2. this

    old bogs

    Wasn't there something about cows and methane? Not 55mil years ago obviously but well, recently. Maybe the cheap holiday flights are ok after all - it's really just those cows.

  3. RichardB

    Dunno about you lot

    But I hate sitting on a cold bog. Central heating all the way.

    Hmm, now theres a thought... heated toilet seats. $$$

  4. Colt

    dino pooh

    your average heard of cows cant produce as much methane as a full grown dino...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Ok, but

    so, you're saying cars *must* be the cause of *all* positive feedback (and hence warming) - not very scientific, I think.

  6. eddiewrenn

    a load of hot air

    um, guys, aren't you forgetting something? Donald Trump wasn't around 55m years ago...

  7. Jamie Davis

    @Colt

    How dare you!? Like you're some kind of expert on extinct reptiles!? Such arrogance...

    ...Everyone knows that Michael Crichton is the authority on dino crap.

  8. adam

    please remove the propoganda vs truth comment. It's spam.

    Run a google search for InteliOrg. You'll be amazed at how many times the phrase:

    "in order to be an intelligent reader you must have a basic knowledge. Please do your own homework, a starting point http://www.InteliOrg.com/"

    shows up.

    This posting is clearly spam to send readers to inteliorg.com, and should be removed.

  9. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Re: Heated toilet seats. £&$%!

    The Japanese got there years ago. Apparently they are an acquired taste, since it feels like you've just sat down where someone was s(h)itting just a few seconds earlier and not everyone is comfortable with that sensation.

  10. david g

    Yawn

    Please headline all future articles like this :

    Somebody publishes un-peer-reviewed hypothesis to support additional research grant application

  11. Peter Mellor

    Heated toilet seats and other crap

    By Ken Hagan

    Posted Friday 21st September 2007 09:07 GMT

    The Japanese got there years ago. Apparently they are an acquired taste, since it feels like you've just sat down where someone was s(h)itting just a few seconds earlier and not everyone is comfortable with that sensation.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Not sure what this has to do with methane and global warming, but here goes:

    The Japanese do indeed go in for electrically heated toilet seats. The distaste felt by some for a warm seat is irrational. The British physicist Arthur Eddington felt distaste for sitting on a chair warmed by another's recent presence until he realised that heat is simply the vibration of molecules and conveys nothing more personal about the bum from which it originated.

    Of course, the multiple use of a toilet seat can pose a hygiene problem, but this is due to the possible transmission of bacteria, which persist even after the seat has cooled.

    Japanese toilets of an even more advanced design will, at the push of a button, wash the orifice with a spray of water (temperature and pressure selectable to suit the tastes of the user) and some models will follow up with a blast of air to dry the parts. In my experience (and I have just returned from a visit to Japan) these are very efficient at cleansing and the sensation is not at all unpleasant. These seats are on sale in the UK.

    If they catch on, these seats could reduce the consumption of loo paper (so saving trees) and save the Muslims from worrying about eating with their left hands. Of course, if there is a prolonged power cut, one might be reduced to torn-up copies of the News of World, which I recall from my childhood, but these tend to put on more than they take off, if you see what I mean.

  12. Elijah

    It all makes perfect sense

    Read this and you will be surprised at what you may learn.

    http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm

    http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=7377

    Tell me what you think about the above links.

  13. Dr Stephen Jones

    un-peer-reviewed hypothesis

    You are correct.

    http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/ogu/people/pancost.htm

    Pancost (spelled Paincost in the article) is a chemist. If he had proposed a hypothesis critical of catastrophism, you can be sure the Global Warming lobby would have crucified him by now for "not being a real climate scientist."

  14. Danny Thompson

    @ It all makes perfect sense

    Run away! Run away! The Veggies are trying to get in on the act.

    So, following our Veggies links above we are to believe that the solution to GW is to not only go green but eat green. HTF does that work then? All that happens when I eat lots of vegetation is that I add to the Methane problem. Way to go Veggies!

    There has not been a single satisfactory explanation as to why CO2 and any number of other malicious gasses only follow global warming historically, not precede it. Any such discussion is crushed by the compulsory zeal that accompanies the flawed gasses theories - and that is all that they are, theories. But then there is little money to be made from trying to find the real truth - no matter how "inconvenient" it is.

    One thing we can be sure of - once the lobbyists and politicians start backing something we can be 100% sure that its all lies and damned lies.

    I'm old enough to have survived predictions of a forthcoming Ice Age, Nuclear Winter and at least two bouts of Global Warming.

  15. Mike VandeVelde

    well, no worries then

    since we've drained and paved over a huge percentage of all the bogs in the world, everyone can just relax.

  16. Alan Donaly

    what would do

    Without junk mail the snail kind when for some reason we run out of tp.

This topic is closed for new posts.