On 20/05/2021 18:35, Tim Streater wrote:
On 20 May 2021 at 18:15:50 BST, Jack Harry Teesdale
wrote:

On 20/05/2021 18:12, Tim Streater wrote:
On 20 May 2021 at 00:30:07 BST, Fredxx wrote:

On 20/05/2021 00:08, Steve Walker wrote:
On 19/05/2021 16:57, GB wrote:
On 19/05/2021 16:18, Tim Streater wrote:

If the alternative is climate catastrophe, then I'm prepared to stop
occasionally.

How d'ye know that's the alternative?

Let's do a risk analysis:

Suppose all the scientists concerned about climate catastrophe are
wrong, then you'll be suffering a little inconvenience unnecessarily.
That's not the end of the world.


Suppose all the scientists concerned about climate catastrophe are
right, but we refuse to suffer a little inconvenience. That is the end
of the world.

It's not a "little inconvenience" when you are literally unable to get
to a family funeral in time without a petrol or diesel car!

The same way we coped before the motor car, with careful planning.

Actually, or course, we didn't cope, especially before phones. You might get a
letter a week later saying your 8th cousin had pegged it a week previously in
the west of Ireland.

But then, people took that for granted. It was how it was. Today, you tell
people they will have to cope, and their response will be short, pithy, and
Anglo-Saxon.

Telegrams were a common method of fast communication before telephones
were widespread in homes.

What, in 1830? Gosh, who knew!


"Electric telegraph systems were in use commercially from the late
1830s, and expanded considerably in scope after they were nationalised
under Post Office control from 1870. For the next century the service
continued to be offered, although subject to considerable decline as the
telephone system became more widespread."

--
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain