 brian
brian
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David Goldsmith, no the world's full of a mixture of cynicism and naivety and all points in between. Geldof understood (unlike a lot of the concert go-ers) that short term fundraising was just a sticking plaster (band aid, geddit?) and that the real chance of making a difference was by lobbying governments to actually do something about at least some of the underlying problems. Mobilising public opinion was a big part of that.
Imo, the same holds true for climate change. If governments are willing to enter international agreements to meet binding emissions targets then there is some hope, but they won't do it by telling anyone what to do, they'll do it by committing to spending large amounts of cash on low emission power sources (renewables, nuclear, carbon capture, etc) and by incentivising/punishing green/non-green behaviour at both an individual and corporate level.
If the Chinese can build ski resorts and fit into their agreed targets then that's fine. If we never agree the targets in the first place we're (potentially, assuming the science is right) fecked, imo.
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brian
brian
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| brian wrote: |
| David Goldsmith wrote: |
What's all that crap about?
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I'd imagine it's about the fact that you spend an inordinate amount of time posting on a skiing forum but you never actually discuss any skiing you've done (well not in the last 30 years anyway). |
Isn't that 100% irrelevant to the subject at hand - the ski industry and the future of snow?
brian, lay off the personal stuff. It's unnecessary. |
Just answering your question, which was admittedly following a tangent but one that had a small amount of relevance. 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
This whole thing was explained in very simple and logical terms by a fellow member of the SCGB environment group a couple of years ago (he is a scientist):
The world has a finite amount of carbon. It can't be created or destroyed. Some of it is in the atmosphere, some is in live plants. Some is in dead wood - maybe furniture. Some is entering the atmosphere as it transfers from the 'inert' (dead wood, unburned coal, timber, crude oil etc) into CO2.
A vast amount remains locked under the earth's crust, safe until burnt.
The problem is that we're converting far too much 'inert' carbon into greenhouse gases.
I can't believe there are still people in the skiing community who either want to bury their heads in the powder over this, or maybe just don't care what we leave for future generations. |
David, lets get this very clear: the 'safe' carbon in coal seams and crude oil reservoirs comes from animals and plants that have died - from a time when there was much more life on earth than now. If/when it is burned, it produces CO2 which becomes available again for incorporation into living things.
A warmer, wetter, more CO2-rich biosphere is GOOD for life on earth, other things being equal.
Some species, including man, may find it hard to adapt. However, it would be one hell a lot of easier than adapting to another ice age, which have all but killed off the human race in the past (and completely from these parts). Maybe anthropogenic warming might save us from that.
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brian
brian
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laundryman, indeed, bit of a long term view there though.
Who cares about biodiversity anyway, what about the snowline ? 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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If you swallow a line produced by a body that exists virtually because of that line and don't accept there are good arguements against that line, then yeah, blame skiing or whatever suits you.
The only thing that is universally accepted is that temps are up globally. Its not poven why but it suits governments to adopt this line because there is a tax grab in it and it suits scientific bodies or persons to 'study' it because there is funding in it. Turkeys and Xmas etc and anyone remember the great Y2K hoax..!!!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| JT wrote: |
| anyone remember the great Y2K hoax..!!! |
Y2K was not a hoax but a chaos averted.
Case in point, the US congress passed a law to change the date that daylight saving time starts for year 2007. Not everyone gave a passing thought on how their computer would behave. Quite a few services were down for hours, some days, because their computer gave the wrong hour. When they finally fixed it, they conveniently forgot the "old" date, which was last Sunday as far as the computer was concern. So again, service disruption due to the wrong hours.
Had not the money spend on Y2K, lots more of that would had happened on first day of 2001.
When it comes to how the laymen views technology, there's always the "if it aren't broke, don't fix it" attitude. That's what drives the scientific field mad. Somethings can't just wait for it to break.
Everyone knows the tempurature is going up and it's not comfortable to live in in a matter of decades. The cause is not fully known yet. To not bother to spend the money to "study" it, it may be too late to do anything about it a few decades later.
I'm not buying the theory the CO2 was the sole cause of it. But to say there's no need to waste money to study it is throwing the babe out with the bath water.
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abc,
Y2K ..? It was a hoax where I work and people got a paid fortune for it.
And I am not saying don't investigate but be even handed about it
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Where I worked they started paying contractors £700 EACH from 1996/7 onwards to make sure the computer systems would be ok. Thing is, none of the computer stuff was old stuff that was likely to have a problem anyway. As far as I know the Y2K would have only affected equipment using software programmed with decimal arithmetic - i.e. clunky old punch card mainframes from the 60s. Stuff since the 70s uses binary arithmetic and would have been unaffected. Someone suggested there might be a problem with some equipment and it was soon turned into a huge great big money-making bandwagon with people suggesting disasterour scenarios for any company who didn't pay someone a huge sum of money to make sure they were Y2K compliant. Most small businesses didn't bother, and they were unaffected. Most schools didn't bother, or get Y2K compliant in time, and they were unaffected. I didn't bother and I was unaffected (run business from home and at the time was using a PC that was older than the systems at the company I had been working for who paid millions for Y2K compliance)
Wikipedia has an interesting discussion on this.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2K
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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petemillis, stuff I was maintaining in the early 90s was not going to run past Y2K ! It was (I think) phased out by then but I know it would have failed in some very strange ways.
I assume you mean BCD arithmetic - The systems I worked on used 2 digit BCD year codes in code and database.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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lampbus, that's the thing - why were companies forking out so much on contractors to so their Y2K compliance when all their older stuff had been phased out anyway? Some people were very clever and saw a good money-making opportunity by scaring the majority who were very naive/stupid/thick. Which sounds a bit like scientists who are selectively presenting results from computer modelling of the current climate.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| petemillis wrote: |
| lampbus, that's the thing - why were companies forking out so much on contractors to so their Y2K compliance when all their older stuff had been phased out anyway?. |
Don't think so (the phased out part).
Most companies tend to keep running whatever doesn't break forever. The fact that many of these program would break at Y2K was the reason they got phased out. Many company figured out it cost so much to even find the Y2K related bits in the program, they opted to simply replace the software.
In the whole, a lot of programs got updated functionality MORE than just the Y2K part.
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brian
brian
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petemillis, the problem was size of storage. Some old code was written to optimise space, assumed the "19" part of the year and only stored the last 2 digits as they'd fit in one byte. Old code tends to get reused in new systems so nobody was really sure how many machines would be affected. A lot of auditing and a lot of patching was done before the event. Nobody can say with any authority how bad things would've been if people hadn't been as well prepared.
Incidentally, there is potential for a y2.1k problem ! Leap years occur every 4 years but not normally when the year divides by 100. 2000 was an exception because it divides by 400 but the year 2100 is not a leap year. I've seen systems that assume it will be, so there could be quite a few machines a day out in March 2100.
God that was interesting I hear you remark 
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You know it makes sense.
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brian, in about 1990 I tested a bit of software for a major financial institution that was falsely programmed to treat 2000 as a non-leap year. I reckon I must have been one of the first to test for Y2K compliance. Anyway, the functionality was migrated to another platform way before 2000. Overall, I think the Y2K issue was massively over-hyped by vested interests and the government and big business fell for it hook, line and sinker.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| laundryman wrote: |
| Anyway, the functionality was migrated to another platform way before 2000. Overall, I think the Y2K issue was massively over-hyped by vested interests and the government and big business fell for it hook, line and sinker. |
I never worked on Y2K specifically. Partly because I don't know many of the language those "old" programs were written in. But also partly, I was tied up working on "new" projects destined to replace the programs that may or may not be Y2K compliant.
I must say I benefited from the Y2K "hoax" even though I never touch a line of code that has to do with date calculations! 
But had Y2K came 10 year later, we would have still been using A LOT of programs written 10-15 years ago. As for now, programs written AFTER 2000 will be used long time in the future, albeit wrapped up in layers of newer user interface every few years, 'cause there will not be any other motivation to "migrate" the functionality.
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