Time for a rant in A minor...
Mr Mag00 said:
Its called a way over due tax bill!!!!!!!!!! and should be annual!
dont be daft, Virgin is a legitimate company that pays its taxes on time each year.
afraser2k said:
Must be the new "in" thing to do for billionaires these days?
people complain when billionairs sit on their money and their companys coffers are full, yet when they try to put serious ammounts of it towards something useful for the world, people like yourself ridicule them. They obviously just cant do anything right in your eyes.
badgermonkey said:
Either way it doesnt really matter. We can't stop global warming, it's been happening since the Ice Age! (How else do you think the ice age ended)
true its not preventable, but warming that should have occurred over the next 1000 years occurred in the last 50, and we are mostly to blame. also temperatures would not increase indefinatly if humans were not here, the planet goes through little cycles over several millenia with temperatures bobing around along a median line with the odd sharp drop or rise. so far the last 50 years is the only time we have been able to find such a remarkable leap in global temperature.
Reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere temperatures for the last 1000 years according to various older articles (bluish lines), newer articles (reddish lines), and instrumental record (black line).
full details and sources here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
what needs to be done is a stabilisation of Co2, its possible to remove Co2 from our economys but that will take at least 100 years to accomplish globally and thats an optimistic estimate so we need to use the technology at our disposal, this means more wind, more nuclear, more water, and we need to get cracking on geothermal technology which is still in its infancy despite there being a massive source of energy under our feet.
we can also use carbon fibre to build cars and aircraft now, halving there weight thus lowering fuel consumption and giving them 12 times the impact capacity of steel. I have seen carbon fibre cars and combined with a hybrid engine they get 60 / 100 miles per gallon and look just like an ordinary car and at not that much more expense than regular production methods its a simple way to reduce some of our Co2 output. theres also research going on into making carbon into glass which could prove an interesting cheap useful and clean method of carbon storage.
we have so much technology, yet we barely use it because governments and people in general do not like change and risk. its going to be far worse if we do nothing.
AcidHell2 said:
I'm realistic. If the 10 year prediction is right, then the only way to "save" us is by bankrupting ever nation dependent of fuel. I'm sorry I would rather cope with the effects like us humans are renowned for doing. Than bankrupt are society and end are way of life.
Also we can't do it as a nation. Its goto include every country to put an effort in. Places like china are building huge coal power stations. These will be chucking out vast amounts of co2.
basically there is little we can do, the sooner people relies that the better. Where humans, where great at inventing and surviving. We will adapt.
bankrupting every nation??? a little over dramatic. see above your quote for just some of the things we can do. i would also like to point out that sweden is aiming for an oil free economy by 2020 and they are on track for that as well. its a model we can look at and use to adapt our countrys.
and i have to say even if the choice was between a dead world in 1000 years and going without now, i would be prapaired to lose a few things from my life.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4694152.stm <-- full story on sweden.
you say humans will survive... some will, but not everyone, and our way of life is going to be disrupted beyond anything we have seen before. As the great man David Attenborough said recently,
"our choices now are between severe climate change and catastrophic climate change". anything we can do to minimise the impact is worth doing, this is what Mr branson has set out to do.
