Craig David

http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/1491074.htm I was half thinking of flogging mine (I'm not going to) so had a glance on there to gauge prices. It's a good spec but that's an awful lot of money! Maybe you've all seen it before... I did try a search.

One mistake in 3,000 pages? So that report's only 99.9% correct then....

I'm probably applying to do an MSc on the subject. Oil companies are putting colossal amounts of cash into backing the sceptic argument. The majority of the scientific community still believe it's very real.

Jaffa - I could be interested in those but can't PM or post on that thread. Could you email me at Fazer600tim [at] yahoo.com please? Many thanks everyone.

Cheers lads - that sounds fairly simple. I'll pop the covers off and have a look. Many thanks.

One of my front speakers is all buzzy and rattly on tunes with lots of bass. I guess I should replace them. Anyone know what sort will fit? I just want reasonable ones, nothing too fancy. Thanks in advance.

They wouldn't quote me when I renewed last week as mine's an import and not old enough for a classic policy. After a lot of ringing round Adrian Flux were the cheapest but I think it'll always vary depending on circumstances. There's no getting away from all the ringing round if you want the best price.

Could it be tracking? If the suspension's lowered or the original shocks have sagged I think that can effect the camber.

A massive 'thank you' to all the staff at Zedworld for doing a great job of some work needed on my car. Superb customer service too. Highly recommended.

Trevz, like I said, I don't think you'll convince me or vice versa. A few hundred is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of the global scientific community. I don't think anyone's gathering names of non-sceptics as most think the argument's moot anyway. Solving the problem's more pressing than arguing with an incorrect minority. I admit there possibility exists that I'm incorrect but can you be 100% certain the sceptic argument's true?

Thanks dewd! :) Like I said earlier before I think this is an emotive issue for some and lots of people want to believe the whole thing's not true otherwise it threatens their lifestyle in some way or other.

I think if you read scientific journals or even broad sheet newspapers you should get a pretty good idea.

You haven't supplied 30,000 scientists, you've provided a link to a somewhat unconvincing site with no scientific credibility which says 30,000 scientists have signed a pettition. It's all a bit tin foil hat / ranting. I can post up credible looking links claiming milk give you cancer but of course it's not true. If you want the real deal, check out Science or Nature journals. My four closest friends all have science PhDs and work in scientific fields. My father is a university professor in a scientific subject, he was the youngest person to chair a government scientific committee and he recently got an OBE for his work. I've asked all of them about this subject and they're all 100% certain man made climate change is very real. I could get them to post on here / come round your house and tell you* but I don't think you'll believe them, just as I don't believe conspiracy sites. *ok, in truth they're unlikely to do either as they're busy people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703682.html By professor Michael E. Mann Friday, December 18, 2009 I cannot condone some things that colleagues of mine wrote or requested in the e-mails recently stolen from a climate research unit at a British university. But the messages do not undermine the scientific case that human-caused climate change is real. The hacked e-mails have been mined for words and phrases that can be distorted to misrepresent what the scientists were discussing. In a Dec. 9 op-ed, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin argued that "The e-mails reveal that leading climate 'experts' . . . manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures." Yet the e-mail she cites was written in 1999, just after the warmest year ever recorded (1998) to that date. It could not possibly have referred to the claim that global temperatures have declined over this decade -- a claim that is false (the current decade, as has been recently reported, will go down as the warmest on record). In one case, professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia refers to a "trick" regarding temperature data that he attributes to an article that co-authors and I published in the journal Nature in 1998. We showed one up-to-date temperature data set from thermometer measurements along with a longer data set, based on calculations from natural "proxy" records such as ice cores, corals and tree rings, that ended in 1980. The "trick" (by which scientists generally mean a clever solution, i.e., a "trick of the trade") was that the longer-term record could be viewed in the context of recent temperature measurements. There was nothing secret about this. Both temperature curves were clearly labeled in our Nature article, and anyone could download the data we plotted. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed this work in 2006 in a study reported by this newspaper ["Past Few Decades Warmest on Record, Study Confirms," news story, June 23, 2006]. Members of the peer-review panel said that they "saw nothing that spoke . . . of any manipulation" and that the study was "an honest attempt to construct a data analysis procedure." In the same e-mail, Jones uses the phrase "hide the decline" in reference to work by tree-ring expert Keith Briffa. Because tree-ring information has been found to correlate well with temperature readings, it is used to plot temperatures going back hundreds of years or more. Briffa described a phenomenon in which the density of wood exhibits an enigmatic decline in response to temperature after about 1960. This decline was the focus of Briffa's original article, and Briffa was clear that these data should not be used to represent temperatures after 1960. By saying "hide the decline," Jones meant that a diagram he was producing was not to show those data during the unreliable post-1960 period. The conspiracy theories about the e-mails are fueled in part by their criticisms of the quality of two papers regarding global warming and a suggestion that at least one of the papers be kept out of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. As Nature noted in a recent editorial, neither the e-mail writers nor the IPCC suppressed any findings. Both papers were included in the IPCC's report. Some statements in the stolen e-mails reflect poor judgment -- for example, a colleague referring to deleting e-mails that might be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request -- but there is no evidence that this happened. Palin wrote that Alaska's climate is changing but referred to "thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice" as "natural, cyclical environmental trends." In fact, such changes are among the effects scientists predicted would occur as greenhouse gas levels increase. Scientific evidence for the reality of human-caused climate change includes independently replicated data documenting the extent of warming; unprecedented melting of glaciers; rises in global sea levels; increasingly widespread continental drought; and models that predict all of these things but only when human impacts are included. Those same models project far more profound and potentially damaging impacts of climate change if we do not take action to stabilize greenhouse gas levels. The scientific consensus regarding human-caused climate change is based on decades of work by thousands of scientists around the world. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the scientific case is clear. As world leaders work in Copenhagen to try to combat this problem, some critics are seeking to cloud the debate and confuse the public. Michael E. Mann, the author of "Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming," is a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center.

I think that represents a tiny proportion of the scientific community. The majority and those with credibility believe it. A lot of children are taught creationism in school too. Very few believe it.

After 20 mins on the phone to them they said they don't insure imports. :cursing:

Mine's at Zedworld having (amongst other work) new front discs and pads as we speak. I think they're EBC. About £300 all in for discs, pads, fitting, vat etc I think ... maybe a bit more? From my experience of really cheap discs on motorbikes, I'd be wary of anything that might not be up to the job.

I'm a family man these days! And got back into bikes. Still got the Zed though. I suspect a lot of the "don't believe in global warming" the tinfoil hat brigade / media spin. Also people don't want to believe something so potentially dangerous. Scientists do not need to invent anything to keep themselves in work. There's plenty for them to do anyway. I'm convinced the world's scientific community is very much in agreement about climate change being very real. You can find on-line stuff to back up almost anything, no matter how mad or incorrect it is - look at all the Twin Towers conspiracy theories for example. Missiles? Smoke demons? Mossad? Some people will believe anything. I suspect we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

It's not global warming, it's climate change. It'll bring about more extreme conditions rather than just warm everywhere up a bit. Climatology is not the same as meterology. IIRC no major credible scientific body has denied the existance rapid, man made climate changce since 2007.

Thanks chaps! :)

Any ideas how often (years / miles) each of these should be changed? Thanks in advance.

Well we'll all get to find out. The consensus is a tipping point will be hit before 2050 IIRC.

Nice!

I'm reasonably qualified / connected but no, I don't work in the field. A mate (with a ecology PhD from Cambridge) told me about a study conducted when a dam was built in China. They asked people in the area what risk they thought the new dam posed them. People living a long way away thought the risk was small. As they got nearer to the dam, people living there thought the risk increased. The nearer they got, the greater the people thought the risk was. That was the case until they were right next to the dam. The people there said they believed there was no risk to them at all.

Sadly climate change is real. It'd be nice to believe it isn't and we don't have to do anything, but that's not the case. 1. EVIDENCE THAT THE EARTH'S TEMPERATURE IS GETTING WARMER IS UNCLEAR Sceptic Instruments show there has been some warming of the Earth's surface since 1979, but the actual value is subject to large errors. Most long-term data comes from surface weather stations. Many of these are in urban centres which have been expanding and using more energy. When these stations observe a temperature rise, they are simply measuring the "urban heat island effect". In addition, coverage is patchy, with some regions of the world almost devoid of instruments. Data going back further than a century or two is derived from "proxy" indicators such as tree-rings and stalactites which, again, are subject to large errors. Counter Warming is unequivocal. Ocean measurements, decreases in snow cover, reductions in Arctic sea ice, longer growing seasons, balloon measurements, boreholes and satellites all show results consistent with records from surface weather stations. The urban heat island effect is real but small; and it has been studied and corrected for. Analyses by Nasa, for example, use only rural stations to calculate trends. Research has shown that if you analyse long-term global temperature rise for windy days and calm days separately, there is no difference. If the urban heat island effect were large, you would expect to see more warming on calm days when more of the heat stays in the city. Furthermore, the pattern of warming globally doesn't resemble the pattern of urbanisation, with the greatest warming seen in the Arctic and northern high latitudes. Globally, there is a warming trend of about 0.8C since 1900, more than half of which has occurred since 1979. 2. IF THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS RISING, IT HAS NOW STOPPED Sceptic Since 1998 - more than a decade - the record, as determined by observations from satellites and balloon radiosondes, shows no discernible warming. Counter The year 1998 was exceptionally warm because of a strong El Nino event, while 2008 was unusually cold because of La Nina conditions. Variability from year to year is expected, and picking a specific warm year to start an analysis (or a cold one to end with) is "cherry-picking". If you start in 1997 or 1999 you will see a sharp rise. Furthermore, while the UK Met Office regards 1998 as the hottest year yet, Nasa thinks it was 2005 (they use the same data but interpret it differently). According to the Met Office, the 10 warmest years in the modern record have all occurred since 1997. 3. THE EARTH HAS BEEN WARMER IN THE RECENT PAST Sceptic The beginning of the last Millennium saw a "Medieval Warm Period" when temperatures, certainly in Europe, were higher than they are now. Grapes grew in northern England. Ice-bound mountain passes opened in the Alps. The Arctic was warmer in the 1930s than it is today. Counter There have been many periods in Earth history that were warmer than today - for example, the last interglacial (125,000 years ago) or the Pliocene (three million years ago). Those variations were caused by solar forcing, the Earth's orbital wobbles or continental configurations; but none of those factors is significant today compared with greenhouse warming. Evidence for a Medieval Warm Period outside Europe is patchy at best, and is often not contemporary with the warmth in Europe. As the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) puts it: "The idea of a global or hemispheric Medieval Warm Period that was warmer than today has turned out to be incorrect." Additionally, although the Arctic was warmer in the 1930s than in the following few decades, it is now warmer still. One recent analysis showed it is warmer now than at any time in the last 2,000 years. 4. COMPUTER MODELS ARE NOT RELIABLE Sceptic Computer models are the main way of projecting future climate change. But despite decades of development they are unable to model all the processes involved; for example, the influence of clouds, the distribution of water vapour, the impact of warm seawater on ice-shelves and the response of plants to changes in water supply. Climate models follow the old maxim of "you put garbage in, you get garbage out". Counter Models will never be perfect and they will never be able to forecast the future exactly. However, they are tested and validated against all sorts of data. Over the last 20 years they have become able to simulate more physical, chemical and biological processes, and work on smaller spatial scales. The 2007 IPCC report produced regional climate projections in detail that would have been impossible in its 2001 assessment. All of the robust results from modelling are backed up by theoretical science or observations. 5. THE ATMOSPHERE IS NOT BEHAVING AS MODELS WOULD PREDICT Sceptic Computer models predict that the lower levels of the atmosphere, the troposphere, should be warming faster than the Earth's surface. Measurements show the opposite. So either the models are failing, or one set of measurements is flawed, or there are holes in our understanding of the science. Counter Interpretation of the satellite data has not always been straightforward - but it does not show the opposite of what computer models predict. Two separate analyses show consistent warming, one faster than the surface and one slightly less fast. Information from balloons has its own problems but the IPCC concluded in 2007: "For the period since 1958, overall global and tropical tropospheric warming estimated from radiosondes has slightly exceeded surface warming". 6. CLIMATE IS MAINLY INFLUENCED BY THE SUN Sceptic Earth history shows climate has regularly responded to cyclical changes in the Sun's energy output. Any warming we see can be attributed mainly to variations in the Sun's magnetic field and solar wind. Counter Solar variations do affect climate, but they are not the only factor. As there has been no positive trend in any solar index since the 1960s (and a negative trend more recently), solar forcing cannot be responsible for the recent temperature trends. The difference between the solar minimum and solar maximum over the 11-year solar cycle is 10 times smaller than the effect of greenhouse gases over the same interval. 7. A CARBON DIOXIDE RISE HAS ALWAYS COME AFTER A TEMPERATURE INCREASE NOT BEFORE Sceptic Ice-cores dating back nearly one million years show a pattern of temperature and CO2 rise at roughly 100,000-year intervals. But the CO2 rise has always come after the temperature rise, not before, presumably as warmer temperatures have liberated the gas from oceans. Counter This is largely true, but largely irrelevant. Ancient ice-cores do show CO2 rising after temperature by a few hundred years - a timescale associated with the ocean response to atmospheric changes mainly driven by wobbles in the Earth's orbit. However, this time, CO2 is leading temperature. Furthermore, the situation today is dramatically different. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere (35% increase over pre-industrial levels) is from man-made emissions, and levels are higher than have been seen in 650,000 years of ice-core records. They may in fact be higher than at any time in the last three million years. 8. LONG-TERM DATA ON HURRICANES AND ARCTIC ICE IS TOO POOR TO ASSESS TRENDS Sceptic Before the era of satellite observation began in the 1970s, measurements were ad-hoc and haphazard. Hurricanes would be reported only if they hit land or shipping. The extent of Arctic ice was measured only during expeditions. The satellite record for these phenomena is too short to justify claims that hurricanes are becoming stronger or more frequent, or that there is anything exceptional about the apparent shrinkage in Arctic ice up to 2007. Counter The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment project notes that systematic collection of data in parts of the Arctic began in the late 18th Century. The US National Hurricane Center notes that "organised reconnaissance" for Atlantic storms began in 1944. So although historical data is not as complete as one might like, conclusions can still be drawn from it. And the IPCC does not claim that global warming will make hurricanes more frequent - its 2007 report says that if anything, they are likely to become less frequent, but more intense. 9. WATER VAPOUR IS THE MAJOR GREENHOUSE GAS; CO2 IS RELATIVELY UNIMPORTANT Sceptic The natural greenhouse effect keeps the Earth's surface about 33C warmer than it would otherwise be. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, accounting for about 98% of all warming. So changes in carbon dioxide or methane concentrations would have a relatively small impact. Water vapour concentrations are rising, but this does not necessarily increase warming - it depends how the water vapour is distributed. Counter The statement that water vapour is "98% of the greenhouse effect" is simply false. In fact, it does about 50% of the work; clouds add another 25%, with CO2 and the other greenhouse gases contributing the remaining quarter. Water vapour concentrations are increasing in response to rising temperatures, and there is evidence that this is adding to warming, for example in Europe. The fact that water vapour is a feedback is included in all climate models. 10. PROBLEMS SUCH AS HIV/AIDS AND POVERTY ARE MORE PRESSING THAN CLIMATE CHANGE Sceptic The Kyoto Protocol has not reduced emissions of greenhouse gases noticeably. The targets were too low, applied only to certain countries, and have been rendered meaningless by loopholes. Many governments that enthuse about the treaty and want a successor are not going to meet the reduction targets that they signed up to in Kyoto. Even if it is real, man-made climate change is just one problem among many facing the world's rich and poor alike. Governments and societies should respond proportionately, not pretend that climate is a special case. Poorer countries should not be forced to constrain their emissions and therefore their economic growth, as they will be under a Copenhagen treaty. Some economists believe that a warmer climate would, on balance, improve lives. Counter Arguments over the Kyoto Protocol are outside the realms of science, although it certainly has not reduced greenhouse gas emissions as far or as fast as the IPCC indicates is necessary. The latest IPCC Working Group 2 report suggest that the impact of man-made climate change will on balance be deleterious, particular to the poorer countries of the tropics, although colder regions may see benefits such as increased crop yields. Investment in energy efficiency, new energy technologies and renewables are likely to benefit the developing world. A Copenhagen treaty would not force emission constraints on the world's poorest countries - in fact, it will funnel money to them for technology and climate protection, helping clean growth. More affluent developing countries - including China - will have to constrain their emissions growth but they agreed to this at the 2007 Bali summit.