Reply: I think you do agree you need to calculate the energy loss on power generation as well as in the loco. I was not saying diesel trains are fuel efficient.

Reply: I USED TO FAVOUR EAST OF LONDON WITH STACKING OVER THE SEA. IN THE MODERN CLIMATE OVER PLANNING AND WILDLIFE THERE WOULD NEED TO BE A SUITABLE STUDY OF WHERE MIGHT BE FEASIBLE

If I was tasked with designing an eco-town I'd try to keep pedestrians away from traffic using subways, fenced off roads, good parking facilities and pedestrianised commercial areas. That way I'd hope to keep the bulk of the traffic moving as efficiently as possible, ideally in 5th/6th gear.

Instead they want us all to drive around in 2nd – what a bunch of nutters!

London to Paris by Eurostar 22 Kg/CO2
London to Paris by Plane 244 Kg/CO2
by Small Car 44kg for 1 passenger, 22 for 2
Large Car 88kg for 1 passenger, 44 for 2
Coach 30.5kg
(213 miles)

If your worried about old buses and trains, campaign for new more efficient ones, I do. You say your interested in increasing efficiency, thats great, promote smaller cars. You think planes can go on increasing as the airlines predict and other airports will pick up any increases if Heathrow doesn't, but by then peak oil will mean fuel for planes will be very expensive. We need to invest in renewables so we have a future with some energy.

Your right to call for a debate on this, we need action now.

Reply: Your figures make assumptions about the number of people using the train. If you look across the whole network and at all times of day passenger numbers of public transport do n ot met your favourable calculations. I do campaign for more fuel efficient transport of all kinds.

IPCC is a political construct and is most definitely not the "consensus view of some 2500 scientists worldwide". It is heavily influenced by NGO's, as is our government and opposition. Greenpeace were part of the writing team for the Summary for Policy Makers. Friends of the Earth are heavily involved with the Tyndall Centre in promoting the Climate Change Bill, as described here on a regional FoE site:

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

Sometime this year, the UK will be the first country in the world to have enacted a legally binding framework requiring the government to reduce the country's climate change emissions by a fixed % every year in order to reach a long-term target by 2050. We know this because the Bill, originally proposed by Friends of the Earth, is now supported by the government and all opposition parties.

This will be incredibly damaging to the UK for no measurable effect on climate and is all based on flawed interpretations of the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere.

In a paper presented at a 1992 Conference in Hawaii, on “Climate and Volcanic Aerosols.' Dr. T. Segalstad, from the University of Oslo, determined that:

"At least 96% of the current atmospheric CO2 comes from non-fossil fuel sources; that is, natural marine and juvenile [volcanic] sources. Hence for the atmosphere CO2 budget, marine degassing and juvenile degassing (from volcanic eruptions) are far more important, and the burning of fossil-fuel and biogenic materials much less important, than hitherto assumed."

Temperatures have not increased since 1998, whilst CO2 levels have risen. From the 40's to the 80's temperatures declined at a time of increasing CO2, yet the coldest period, 61-90, is the period regarded as "normal" for current comparisons.

With the coldest winter for some time over the Northern Hemisphere, we are still propagandised daily on "Global Warming".

I just hope that a major party will sometime soon have the courage to expose the Emporor's New Clothes, before much more damage is done. I believe the current public mood is ready for the really inconvenient truths about global warming because their credulity is stretched to breaking by real world obsrvations.

The one area I might disagree with your post is related to trains. As the supply of oil diminishes in the coming decades it seems inevitable to me that electric-powered trains will become increasingly important. I myself persisted in using the Waterloo-Reading line for a number of years to commute to work in South Reading (and indeed to Heathrow via Feltham) but ultimately returned to the car out of sheer frustration. The fundamental problem is that the trains do not really go where people want, which is only made worse by the high cost, unpredictability and strike-prone workforce. The building of a new station in South Reading on an existing line – reportedly the first in Britain for 50 years – is a sign of some much needed fresh thinking, but much more needs to be done. There must be many other such places in Britain that could be reached on existing train lines if only there were more new stations built close to business parks. It would be even better if there would be small trains running every 5 minutes rather than lumbering giants that you have to wait half an hour for. I believe (based on comments from former Japanese colleagues) that the UK train service is a real disincentive to FDI into the UK so we should not just think that airports are the overriding transport issue for overseas investment. As an absolute minimum Heathrow should be reachable by direct train services from the west, for example by building a rail spur from the Reading-Waterloo line at Feltham. How Terminal 5 was approved without this I do not know.

Reply: Like you I want more frequent trains. The problem is the technology – our local lines can only take about 24 trains an hour given signalling and braking constraints, and the lines are full at busy times of day. That is why I support different technology to increase the number of "trains "that could use the track or line space.

What I would like to know is just suppose… that CO2 keeps on increasing no matter how caused and the planet gets colder and colder ?

The ARTIC is bigger and colder already.

Why is a few degrees of warming harmful ? I can think of many reasons why it would benefit mankind.

http://www.order-order.com/2007/08/cars-are-green…