Tracing mains water pipe in ground ??

[Timothy Murphy]

Do you mean that you don't believe human activity has increased the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Or do you believe that it has, but that this has had no effect?

[The Medway Handyman]

Not necessarily no.

I think the climate is changing because it does so every now & then and always has. The Thames used to freeze over regularly for example & we didn't have 20+ million cars on the roads. Thats the black swan IMV.

If the carbon dioxide levels are increasing, that might be caused by climate change, but I don't believe its causing climate change.

I'm highly skeptical of the environmental lobby which has now become an industry.

[Timothy Murphy]

There is overwhelming evidence that CO2 levels have been increasing over the last 100 years (see eg ) The level has been increasing steadily at a little over 2ppm for 50 years from February 2004 to February 2009 it increased from 376 to 386ppm: .

In my view there is no plausible explanation for this except human activity. If the activity were periodic then the period must be much shorter than any other plausible terrestrial or solar-system cause.

Not really relevant, but I don't think the Thames used to freeze regularly within historical records. Pepys records it freezing over, but it seems pretty clear from his diary that this was a very unusual event.

Having said that, there is obviously a periodic variation in temperature. There are ice-ages roughly every 100,000 years, with warm periods of about 10,000 years in between. (See eg for a very interesting article by Freeman Dyson, who is a well-known sceptic on the global warming issue, but who accepts that human activity has made a big difference. He points out incidentally that we are on the point of a new ice age. His view - roughly - is that the effects of global warming are not as bad as the pessimists say.)

[The Medway Handyman]

AD250, 903, 1408, 1435, 1506, 1514, 1537, 1565, 1595, 1608, 1621, 1635,

1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1677, 1684, 1695, 1709, 1716, 1740, 1768, 1776, 1785, 1788, 1795, and 1814. 1666 drought which exacerbated great fire of London, 1697 hailstones 60 mm in diameter, 1703 Britain's worst ever storm, 17,000 trees down in Kent, 1836 avalanche of snow killed eight people at Lewes, 1902 - 56 hours of continuous rain.

UK population (approximate figures) in 1570 was around 4.8 million rising to

8.3 million in 1801. Certainly not enough human activity to make much difference.

Mr Benz didn't invent the infernal combustion engine till 1885, so I don't think we can blame vehicle polution.

Climate change is nothing new at all and occurs regardless of the size of the human population.

This 'black swan' is of course inconvenient to those who earn their living from Eco - FUD, so is ignored.

[Timothy Murphy]

You don't seem to me to have responded to this. Do you or do you not agree that the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased greatly during the last 100 years? If you do agree, do you think that this increase is due to human activity?

Does anyone argue that the climate was not changing before 1850? You have to analyse changes, if you can, into components with different periods.

[The Medway Handyman]

I rather thought I had, but you appear to have ignored it.

First of all, 100 years is far too short a period for a serious study. A bit like those cosmetic adverts which claim that "79% of woman agreed", which seems fine until the small print reveals the study was on 129 woman.

We simply don't have enough data. 100 years is a millisecond compared to the existance of planet earth. Ice core samples fail to impress me.

Typicically you have ignored the black swan argument. Inconvenient I know, but entirely relevant.

You don't seem to have responded to the data showing that violent climate change is a natural occurance.

Not at all. As I have already pointed out, the climate change in the past could not have been caused by human activity simply because there were not enough humans about.

Climate is always changing, precisely my point. Now however we have 'new puritans' claiming that we are all doomed because of our evil capitalist ways. We have an ecofud industry who have a vested interest in promoting doom & gloom.

We now have every university dependant on its funding into ecobollox, every govmint quango having an environmental advisor, every local council having an environmental team, every newspaper or media outlet having an environmental correspondent. We have politicians eager to grasp political advantage on environmental issues, dispite their zero knowledge of the basic science.

Vested interests should be examined here.

[Timothy Murphy]

The only response you seemed to make was:

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------------------------------------------------ which was ambiguous at best.

You are being silly.

100 years is a perfectly reasonable period to measure something that is increasing by almost 1% each year. I'm sure if someone told you that the level of a flood at your house was rising by 10% an hour you would not reply that 10 hours was too short a time to consider.

I didn't say anything about ice samples. I was talking about the CO2 level.

I didn't say anything about climate change. I was talking about the CO2 level.

It may be your point, but it wasn't mine. I was talking about the CO2 level.

You are losing track of yourself.

[The Medway Handyman]

If you choose to ignore the rest of the post I suppose it is.

How did they measure CO2 levels in 1909 then?

Entirely different scenario. Don't be ridiculous.

Go on then, make your point about CO2 levels again, I'm loosing interest. But I would like to know how they measured CO2 levels 100 years ago - and indeed why they would have bothered. You also claim they measured them in 1959 - same question applies.

[Timothy Murphy]

I'm afraid you are showing a lack of knowledge of scientific history.

100 years ago, ie in 1909, it would have been a classroom exercise to determine the composition of the air. Every chemistry schoolbook would have given the figures. The NPL (National Physical Laboratory) was already analysing every conceivable material to within parts per million.

If you look up Arrhenius, you will find he was already considering global warming through carbon dioxide emissions in the nineteenth century.

[Old Git]

Some fairly interesting stuff here.

course, the ecobollox devotees will never give up on their half baked theories and very guickly forget was they have previously preached. When they started spouting forth with their ill thought through mantras, they were informing us with 150% certainty that we were heading to doomsville in very short order. Why? because we were all using too many CFCs and this was the major cause of global warming, because the CFCs had made a massive hole in the ozone layer. This, they assured us in their usual feverish manner, would eventually lead to the end of the earth because this hole in the ozone layer would never heal but if we gave up using CFCs we could, at least, slow the process down. Two or three years back now, the very scientists who had at first supplied the figures to the ecoturds, released a low key statement to the effect that the hole in the ozone layer had in fact been repaired and was no longer a factor.

That wasn't going to mollifiy the terminally dim of the "Doom sayers" was it? No, they very quietly dropped their previous assertions that we were all going to hell on an aerosol and cast around for another half cocked theory to replace it and they came up with carbon dioxide. No scientific explanation to back up their theory, just bald statements that, as usual, they know best.

Unfortunately, the average Joe in the modern street rarely has the basic education to to question these theories, the youngsters of today blithely soak up all of the misinformation pumped into them by todays so called educators. Yes, those who were poorly educated since the late sixties and are now teachers (Not all of them but many) also believe every little theory proposed by the doomsayers and in turn, force their propoganda on to the kids, who know no better at their tender age and believe everything the teachers tell them.

[The Medway Handyman]

I'm afraid you are showing a lack of knowledge of social history. Education wasn't even compulsory until 1918, so I'm bloody sure they didn't have fully equipped labs with air quality monitoring equipment.

I just have. Fourth rate degree, universaly disliked by his peers, involved in bent Nobel Prizes for his mates and the inspiration for Nazi racial hygiene. Sounds like a nice bloke.

[Rod]

Elementary Education Act 1870 (Forster's Education Act) was used to make education compulsory from 1880, or at least that is wot my eddication telled me. (With a bit of looking as the dates were not at my fingertips.)

[Timothy Murphy]

I don't see what universal education has to do with it.

Your claim, as far as I can see, is that it would have been difficult to measure CO2 levels in 1909. I'm telling you that it would have been a trivial task in the chemistry department of any university at the time.

Faraday was attending Davy's lectures on chemistry 100 years earlier.

It is not relevant to this point, but I believe most grammar schools and major "public schools" in the UK would have had science laboratories of some kind in 1909.

[Timothy Murphy]

you read this yourself, you would see that the crank who wrote the article, far from disputing what I said, namely that the CO2 level has been rising for 100 years, took this as the starting point for his rant.

His argument, if you can call it that, is that global warming is a good thing because we are entering an ice age - a point (the imminent ice age) that I made myself earlier in this thread.

...

As a matter of interest, since you are evidently a person of superior intellect, do you believe that the CO2 level is rising? That was the only point I made, in response to a poster who denied this. I didn't say anything about the consequences, if any, of the increase.

[The Medway Handyman]

Oh? A while ago it was; "100 years ago, ie in 1909, it would have been a classroom exercise to determine the composition of the air. Every chemistry schoolbook would have given the figures".

Now its " a trivial task in the chemistry department of any university at the time".

Typical ecobollox. Change/ignore the facts if they don't support your cause.

Exactly who measured & recorded the figures showing "There is overwhelming evidence that CO2 levels have been increasing over the last 100 years"?

[The Medway Handyman]

The 1918 Education Act made attendance at school compulsory up to the age of

14 years.

[<me9]

My father was 14 in 1919. He was allowed to leave school before then(1917) but only after being certified as up the the educational standard required at 14. He would totherwise have had to continue in school up the age of 14.

So 14 was the compulsory leaving age before 1919, but only for those not up to the required educational standard. I've got my father's school leaving (labour) certificate to say that he was to the approved standard at age 12.

[Roger]

The message from Old Git contains these words:

trouble is it is little more than a pack of lies.

The lines below are an attempt to separate the content copied from the cite above from my response.

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"The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels."

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1998 was an extreme year out of keeping both with what went before and what came after and remains the highest figure so far but 2005 is higher than all the recent years bar 1998. Up until 2005 the trend was very definitely up and those who would argue otherwise on the basis of the 1998 extreme are intellectually dishonest.

According to the Met Office figures the drop from 2006 to 2007 was marginal and one of the smallest annual changes in a record stretching back to 1850. While the drop from 2007 to 2008 was considerable it was less than half the drop from 1998 to 1999 leaving 2008 still one of the hottest years in the record with only 1997, 1998 and 2001 - 2007 hotter. It is not clear what prompted the comment about the 1980s. Even 1990, which (depending on viewpoint) may or may not be part of the 1980s, was the local peak, was lower than 2008.

As I have said before when this topic came up there are a number of occasions in the past were the average temperature declined for several years and it will be several years more before we can be reasonably certain whether or not the average temperature is on a downward trend from the mid 2000s.

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"Meanwhile, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to

1979 levels. What's more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.

In other words, during what was supposed to be massive global warming, the biggest chunks of ice on earth grew larger. Just as an aside, do you remember when the hole in the ozone layer was going to melt Antarctica? But don't worry, we're safe now, that was the nineties."

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The Arctic ice has been thinning for years as well as receding in area so I think this paragraph is just wishful thinking. Recent news reports of the rapid recession of the Antarctic floating ice shelves would reinforce that viewpoint.

One of the predictions for a warmer Antarctic is for greater precipitation so Tomlinson could be basing this on a report of increased depth of ground cover in some areas of the Antarctic continent but what on earth has the ozone hole got to do with global warming. The scare was all about the increased risk of skin cancer which as far as I know is still a seasonal problem in the far South.

[seanwilson471]

Anyone just reading this now, re plastic water pipe, if you an an idea were it is likely to be you can use fencing wire to gauge the length, curl the end of the wire round neatly and tape it so it does not chafe the pipe, dis conect the mdpe pipe at a accessible point and feed the wire down, if ther e are no other services near such as cables you may with a good detector be able to find the wire, alternatively hire a 'CAT SCAN and GENNY' you conn ect the genny to the fencing wire or other wire you have put down the pipe, this generates a radio signal and the cat scan detects this very easily, playing with this i managed to locate a 32mm mdpe plastic pipe all the way from my house under the garage floor and across my paddock for about 50yds the pipe was burried 2 feet down, 3 feet under the paddock. you can also locate plastic drains this way. Where i drew my line maker paint when i du g the hole it was within 2" of my line

[Tim+]

Our neighbours are waiting for this as I type. They have a leak in their incoming mains but no idea where the pipe runs as the house has been extended many times.

Tim