 Unfortunately, wearisome though it is, I think joining discussions as to whether global warming is happening is necessary, especially as here when the sceptics appear to be intelligent people who are really sceptical of the mass media and politicians rather than the science behind climate change.
I think Gore is making things unnecessarily difficult in the quote above (I read the article, it's quite interesting). Surely people respond with fear to immediate threats such as snakes or fire - threats that may require an immediate and rapid response. For most of human existence these are the only type of threats there have been as we didn't have the knowledge to predict long term threats.
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 Yes that's his point. It's interesting you should point out how we've evolved into this as another thing we've not had to deal with until the last few hundred years is assesing risk and judging probability. When a herd of elephants charged at us we didn't stand and judge the probability of being hit or the elephants passing either side of us, we ran. It was better to develop quick reactions than a sense of probability, and we now have great difficulty understanding probability*. For instance, people seem to think that risk is the probability of something happening (for instance - "I don't think scientists can predict what the climate will do"), whereas risk is the probability of something happening and the consequences if it does happen. Even if a person thinks the odds of global warming happening are small, they must realise that the consequences if it does happen are catastrophic, and act accordingly. Keep up the good work over there. I find just writing posts on this thread and the new TGO forum (and others, unrelated) takes up far to much of my time. I see there is some pointing of fingers at China, you might point at that CO2 emissions per capita in China (3.2T) are way below ours (9.4T) - WikipediaJohn * An interesting book on this and randomness is "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Also related to GW is his use of the phrase "black swan", and this also gives a clue as to why some people refuse to believe that such a thing can happen. Warning. This isn't a GW book. It's a book about probability and randomness and it has a Wall Street slant (Taleb was a Wall Street trader). Nonetheless, it's the best book I read all winter (didn't read any of yours last winter :-).
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I'll look out for that book. I hadn't heard about it before. The black swan idea is a good one.
China has recently been reported as producing more global warming emissions than the USA. This of course is as a country not per capita.
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"I don't think the end of cheap flights would have much effect on TGO."
I didn't particularly mean "cheap flights" as in Luton to Alicante for 99p. I think all flights are cheap, and the cost will go up.
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All flights are certainly cheap compared to other forms of transport due to the lack of a fuel tax. I think the cost of all flights will probably go up even if there isn't a tax - rising fuel prices will see to that. However I don't think this will affect TGO particularly. Flights are only part of the cost of the holiday companies and would have to go up enormously before the numbers going on such holidays even stabilised let alone declined. At present the numbers are rising.
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 I'm new to this forum lark but thought I'd start with original question, does anyone else care? Yes, I do. I live in England and we need electricity. So far we have sussed that Wales is good for building dambs, flooding, and supplying us with water. Next, we should convert these reservoirs to generate power. We currently use Scotland for hydro electric but now see it's good for wind power as well. Lots of wind and out of sight from England is supurb. If we covered all of Scotland with wind turbines we could be a net exporter! We could use some of this surplus lecci to make Hydrogen so we can run our cars on it(very green!). Lets face it, as Scotland is running out of oil it needs to look at other ways of supplying England with energy. Most of the energy they have given us so far has been very polluting, which is naughty. This time they have the opportunity to make reparations for all the CO2 they have released. Also, as you look at a map, Scottyland is at the top, so as we all know that electricity flows down hill, there wouldn't be a need to pump it to England. The only exceptions to the blanketing of Scottyland with turbines would be a ban on them anywhere within sight of the campsites at Fort Augustus and Durness. And around Gairloch. Well, they are a bit of an eyesore, aren't they?
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  @*!<+**?
At one time Wales was famous for its main exports, in order of magnitude, coal, steel and teachers. Obviously, it no longer exports enough of any of these, especially teachers!
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Are you seriously trying to tell me that electricity doesn't flow downhill? 
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And as fo teachers coming from Wales, I thought that it was a SCOTCH whiskey, not Welsh. 
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Oops! It appears I can't spell. Need some more teachers. 
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I can't smell ether. 
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 Nanook- do you spit whilst you talk? Just wondering..
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Only sometimes, I usually just dribble a little. How about yourself?
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Depends on which way the winds blowing..
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 Teachers....Eugh! ...thats we call "the cooking whisky" up here
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