peds

Nice one dude!

The debate is slowly, thankfully, finally, being quashed because it's only being perpetuated by the likes of knuckle-dragging simpletons without even the most basic grasp of what is, at the heart of it, incredibly well-understood science. This level of "the debate" should have been knocked on the head back in the late '80s, when we started getting concrete proof of the presence of anthropogenic climate change, when we still had a genuinely decent chance of averting the crisis. That it is even labelled "a debate" in this day and age, at this late stage of the game, is nothing but a source of bewilderment to 99.5% of the scientific community, and should cause great embarrassment to anyone still stuck on that page, and yet, it seems to worn as a badge of honour by an incredibly-small but unbelievably-noisy number of people.

You misunderstand... this isn't a variable that concerns any single individual, as you illustrate with your lottery ticket. It concerns each separate generation, from then until now. For someone born in 1970, after having 5 or 6 of the most frail and doddery years trimmed off of what would have been their life expectancy if society wasn't going to fall apart, it's not such a problem. For someone born in the last few years, who will be enjoying the prime of their life during the very worst stages of the climate wars, mass immigration, weaponised starvation, and genocide, they are likely to live only half as long as their parents' generation. THAT, however you look at it, is a catastrophe. That's the sort of thing that young Greta is upset about, and the primary cause of an astronomical uptick in depression and suicide among young people.

Look, I know that I'm talking to the wrong people here, I accept that nothing will sway your opinion until Norfolk is underwater and the boats of climate refugees are either dropped straight into the starvation camps or machine gunned on sight. But here's a little thought, and the supporting document in question, from Noam Chomsky. Quote (discussing erstwhile President Trump's climate policies) "And notice that the wrecking ball in the White House just doesn’t give a damn. He’s having fun. He’s serving his rich constituency. So what the hell, let’s destroy the world. And it’s not that they don’t know it. Some months ago, maybe a year ago by now, one of the Trump bureaucracies the National Transportation Administration came out with what I think is the most astonishing document in the entire history of the human species. It got almost no attention. It was a long 500-page environmental assessment in which they tried to determine what the environment would be like at the end of the century. And they concluded, by the end of the century, temperatures will have risen seven degrees Fahrenheit, that’s about twice the level that scientists regard as feasible for organized human life. The World Bank describes it as cataclysmic. So what’s their conclusion? Conclusion is we should have no more constraints on automotive emissions. The reasoning is very solid. We’re going off the cliff anyway. So why not have fun? Has anything like that ever appeared in human history? There’s nothing like it." PDF document from the NTA: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/documents/ld_cafe_my2021-26_deis_0.pdf So we've even got climate scientists on your side of the line saying that things are f*cked up, the situation is beyond all hope, so why even bother trying? Let's just make a few more dollars whole we can! If you'd like, I can keep dropping the occasional report or study or TED talk or whatever in here to give you something to think about? But no... it'd be a waste of everyone's time.

Nope, I've had none of that, but I'm only in two years at this point.

Absolutely fair enough. The really shiny silver lining to this cloud is that the next twenty years are going to make some great telly.

The life expectancy of someone born in 1970 is slightly lower than that of, say, my parents, who were born in 1945. My own life expectancy is significantly lower than that, and that of someone born in 2017 is dramatically lower still. This shouldn't be a difficult concept to unwrap.

Good craic, we were pretty busy back at the start of the year when people were still going outside, but then the pubs opened again here in Ireland and now everyone is staying indoors. I myself was scraped off a mountain by my then local team once, I would have definitely died if they hadn't wrestled me down some pretty spicy terrain in a blizzard. I since moved country and I signed up as soon as I'd recovered from my injuries. My two kids were a hair's breadth away from growing up without a father, and the thought of anyone else's family going through that just breaks my heart, so I want to try and give others the same help I received. It's a bit of a time suck, and there's the occasional plonker wandering around a forest in their flip flops who needs pulling out of a gorse bush or something, but there's also the occasional opportunity to do some real good in someone's life. If you've got the skillset, a bit of spare time, and the right frame of mind, I'd heartily recommend signing up.

LED lenser +1. We use them in my local mountain rescue team, they throw a strong beam a long way.

Well, you had my sympathies until that last part, because the short term economic sting necessary to effect significant change will inevitably hurt us little people more than the fabulously wealthy who can, of course, easily afford it. But I'm afraid the consequences of the ongoing ecological collapse and the ever-worsening climate catastrophe aren't just a problem to faced by brown people from the future in places with exciting food. Scientific consensus is that thanks to the knock-on effects of climate change on its current trajectory, anyone on Earth born after 1970 has had their life expectancy cut short somewhere between slightly and dramatically; the most common causes of death for people of my own generation (circa 1986) are going to be starvation and suicide; and my own children of 3 and 4 are statistically unlikely to make it past their 30th birthdays. I'm not sure what O-Level science textbook you are getting your ideas from, but the kick-off date for "global warming" isn't an agreeably-distant 2100 any more, for us here in the civilised western hemisphere we can't expect our pampered and luxurious lifestyles to extend much beyond the year 2030. To boil it down into simply economic terms as you are keen to do, we can either take a bit of a sting now and maybe stand a chance of not having global society collapse around us, or we can most definitely suffer the same economic sting a few years down the line and immediately watch everyone we know and love starve to death. The most frustrating thing is patiently explaining this to people like yourself as the clock slowly runs out.

... You'd rather carry on as we are and see the death of hundreds of millions within your lifetime?

I don't understand why more people aren't suggesting this, I assumed this was the standard way.

I'd have thought mypex or something similar would be better, it'd keep horizontal rain off the wood but it can still breathe.

... no it can't. It's a closed loop, there's no free end for it to pull out...

Wish I'd seen this thread on Monday! I'm using my employer's DeWalt set at work a lot at the moment, I've not a bad word to say about them, and I'm going to buy my own right now. Great tools. I'm lying, I have two bad words to say: I've had the chuck on the drill stick once, but a quick tap with something solid unstuck it. The impact driver tends to heat up pretty quickly if you are using it non-stop, which can be a hassle if that's what you need to do. Best solution I've found is to go and do something else for a while...

All bends are knots, all hitches are knots, and the term knot can be used interchangeably when talking about either, especially in a casual or conversational setting. But thanks for reminding me of the "sliding" part of the name. I could have sworn it had another name though. I'll keep looking.

I think it's great when a brilliant idea you have suddenly gets confirmed by hundreds of years of people already doing it. I invented sole veronique once, before discovering that someone else already had. It gives you the reassurance you need to keep thinking of other ideas.

Have you got a picture of the tree before it had anything done to it?

I second this.

Instead of geotextile and gravel, mulch it with a layer of brown cardboard topped with rotting seaweed (if you live near the beach).

If the neighbour's dogs have survived so far, they are unlikely to start chewing on it any time soon.

Hi Kingfisher, Just a wee bit of advice, you'll get a bit more in the way of responses to your thread if you edit in the following sentence: "I've had a local tree surgeon look at the trees who said they are all dangerous, and he'd take them out for £2000." That should help give it some legs. Best of luck!

Depending on what it's used for, I like to cross my cord over itself once before tying the fisherman's, giving an adjustable loop either side of the knot. One half is then cinched up tight against the biner, leaving the big loop to throw around the rope. This probably has a name, I'm sure someone with a bigger brain than mine can identify it. That's the end of this story.

Kind of detracts from the shtick to be honest with you. I'd get a wee bank of solar panels if I could afford it...

Yo, What's the deal with asking clients nicely if you can plug your charger into one of their sockets... have people done it? Has anyone objected? Has anyone ever expected a few shekels knocked off the bill to compensate for the fistful of volts you stole? Obviously if a tradesman was working away indoors there wouldn't even be a question about it, but people can be funny. Any opinions or anecdotes gratefully received.