Cut anti social behaviour

My neighbour’s car was vandalised on Saturday night. I’m fed up with the all the criminal damage that we have to put up with. Most properties in our bit of the road have suffered. I blame the Council. Their liberal policy in allowing drinking at clubs and pubs well into the early hours means that police have to be on standby in case of civil disorder. Now the police have many calls on their limited resources and cannot therefore patrol our streets at nights to discourage hooligan behaviour.


I call for a review of Council policies that currently allow for extended licensing after midnight. A big reduction will release police to do their proper job. Still on anti social behaviour, I think there is a need for Council Litter Wardens empowered to give on the spot fines. And when our Dog Warden fines people who are too idle to clear up after their dogs, well there should be publicity.


David Young

The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

Wind turbines are beautiful

I note your correspondent in the Bracknell Standard of 23 October denies accelerating global warming by claiming that data published by the University of Illinois shows an increase in ice in the northern hemisphere. Please can he give us the exact scientific reference. I cannot find it and I need to check the claim.



In contrast the Stern Review (2006), Al Gore’s DVD An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment Report (2007) and Gabrielle Walker & Sir David King’s book The Hot Topic (2008) all show that the ice is decreasing at an alarming rate as one of the many effects of climate change. The very recent research by Dr Kevin Anderson at the UK government-funded Tyndall Centre, however, shows that global warming is happening even faster than previously thought by my four references above. He says the politicians of the world have only a few months left to act or else it will be too late to prevent runaway climate change rubbing out most, or all, human life.



For the last 20 years the global scientific community has been unanimous in its pessimism. I’m sorry but I cannot help being very worried, not for myself but for my grandchildren. They are entitled to a full life, not one ruined by the lethargy of our generation over the last 10 years, continuing into the next decade. This is the most important crisis that the human race has ever faced. Yet the politicians do very little, being mainly concerned to win the next election for themselves.



To avoid runaway global warming, we need to burn much less fossil fuel and use renewable sources of energy instead. For the good that they do our planet, I think wind turbines are beautiful. After all humankind has been using nature’s windstrength for thousands of years.



David Young

The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

The scientific evidence is there - A letter to the Bracknell Standard

The scientific evidence is there. The Bracknell Standard of 2 October printed a reply to my letter on climate change. Your correspondent used such phrases as “the current propaganda on global warming” and “scientific argument”. He really should bring himself up to date with the facts as there is no longer any scientific argument. All the independent scientific papers published in the last 20 years have warned of the extreme dangers to human life but thankfully most scientists agree that if actions are taken now, we can save the planet. We know what needs to be done. The minority of scientists, however, say it is already too late to prevent runaway global warming; all we can do is slow the demise of most of the human race (not helped by a population that increases by one and a half million a week); maybe a few of our great grandchildren would live in the new land where we call Antarctica, after the ice has all melted.

 

We all know from looking around us for the last 20 years that global warming is here. In our loft the children’s sledges have remained unused for many years due to the mild winters. I know there used to be a minority of informed people who did not accept that global warming existed. Their view was based on satellite data that has now been shown to be totally false. It had been assumed that the satellite was stationary but it wasn’t. Adjusting for this movement brought the satellite data into line with all the very many millions of temperature readings showing that the planet is getting warmer, all over its surface.

 

I accept that all sorts of nonsense can be found on the world wide web. All some nerd has to do is to write lies and paste them there. To avoid runaway global warming, we need to burn much less fossil fuel and use renewable sources of energy instead. The politicians must sort this out and provide leadership to prevent global disaster. They must act very quickly.

 

David Young

The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

A ramble into the past

DID you know that there was once a Roman town and probably also a Roman fort in what is now Swinley Forest?

 Neither of them were at Caesar’s Camp, which was, of course, and Iron Age hill fort which had fallen out of use almost a century before the Roman invasion of AD43.

 These were just some of the subjects covered on Saturday during a historical ramble around the woods, led by local historian and environment campaigner David Young.

 The walk was one of 13 free Heritage Open Day events to take place between Thursday and Sunday organised by Bracknell Forest Council.

David had expected six or seven people to come along, maybe a dozen if it was a nice day. In fact there were 55, including David’s wife Pauline, who walked with a bag for collecting any rubbish found along the way.

Part of the walk was along the Devil’s Highway, which may or may not be a Roman road, no one is quite sure. It is named, one of the group said, because it is very straight, and anything straight was believed at one time to be of the Devil!

David showed the group a site where he believes there may once have been a Roman fort – midway between Staines and Silchester – and pointed out an area where the Roman town of Wickham Bushes had once been. There is nothing to see there now, but it was once a base for iron works using iron ore from Bagshot. 
He also pointed out the site of Gorrick Well, which had been there since Medieval times but was deemed too dangerous for modern ramblers and was duly filled in in 2003.

The party was also shown the site of five redoubts – manmade trenches and ramparts used for practising manoeuvres at the time when Napoleonic France was beginning to flex its muscles. A military exercise went on for two weeks there in July 1792, watched by a crowd of 200,000, including King George the Third.

Other open days in the series were:

An exhibition at St Michael the Archangel Church, Warfield: a talk on the Benedictines at Warfield; a historical stroll around Warfield; a rural craft and folk day at Lily Hill Park, Bracknell; a tour of Pope’s Manor grounds, Binfield; a tour of the Berkshire Record Office in Reading; a Bracknell Stitching Society exhibition in Bracknell town centre library; tours of the church and churchyard at St Michael and St Mary Magdalene, Easthampstead; tours of the house and grounds at South Hill Park, Bracknell; tours of Wellington College, Crowthorne; a stroll round Newbold College Gardens in Binfield; and a tour of St Michaels and All Angels’ Church in Sandhurst.

We broke it - A letter to the Bracknell Standard

We have done it. They are broken and need repair now. In response to my letter on climate change, Nick Turner said in the Bracknell Standard of 11 September that the Earth’s atmosphere is kept relatively stable by the various feedback mechanisms. Well not any more.

Beware of optimistic scientists. Even at the start of this year, most were saying that by 2100, all the summer ice at the North Pole would have melted. This has now been found to be wildly optimistic as it has been shown that the Summer North Polar Icecap decreased 80% by volume over the last 18 years. It could vanish by 2013, rather than the 2100 estimate of only a few months ago.

Ice cores going back up to 800,000 years tell us that the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere has always been between some 180 and 280 parts per million (PPM). That is until we started to burn oil, around 1860. Now the level is 385 PPM and increasing by over 2 PPM every year. And the figures are even worse if the other greenhouse gases such as methane are included. Turning to temperature, the planet has kept to the same sort of level (plus or minus 0.2 of a degree) since reliable records have existed, from around the year 1000. Since oil started to be burnt, the temperature has risen by 0.8 of a degree, including half a degree in the last 30 years. The sharp rises in temperature have been caused by the sharp rises in our emission of greenhouse gases. There is no other scientific explanation. The Earth’s atmosphere is highly complex and its delicate balance has been disturbed.

Nature’s feedback mechanisms have been broken by the burning of fossil fuels.

For the sake of future generations, we must save the planet. The latest calculation shows that for all years from 2012 onwards, the population of the planet must create 6% less greenhouses gases than the year before. To avoid runaway global warming, we need to burn much less fossil fuel and use renewable sources of energy instead. The politicians must sort this out and provide leadership to prevent global disaster. We haven’t time to leave the bill for the next generation.

David Young
The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

Energy Charges

This winter many people in Bracknell will have to choose whether to eat adequately or heat their homes. Yet Mark Owen-LLoyd, an executive of E.on, was quoted last week as saying that the continued high gas and electricity prices would mean more money for people such as him. What an awful thing to boast about when so many are suffering.

Some energy company have been making profits of £1000 per second throughout the first six months of this year. Huge sums of money are leaving this country and going abroad, as many of the utility companies are foreign owned, Why should poor UK residents pay high energy prices to benefit foreign shareholders?

Of course it was the original decision of the Conservatives "to sell off the family silver" (against the advice of their ex-Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, who used these words). And since 1997 the Labour Government has continued to allow this awful situation. The Green Party calls for a large windfall tax on the vast profits of the energy companies. I think the money raised should be spent on providing solar panels in public and private buildings. This would mean less power being used in Summer. For Winter reductions in the use of fossil fuels, I call for more wind turbines locally.

David YoungThe Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

Climate Change

Colour Photo is 2008 , black and white is 1956

In response to my letter on climate change, Nick Turner suggested in the Bracknell Standard that control should be through education, science and religion.

Education tells us that the planet was formed 4.6 billion years ago, modern human civilisation only started 11,000 years ago with end of the last Ice Age, around 1860 we started to burn oil causing an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that the earth’s temperature started to rise from then on. The rise has now rapidly increased by half a degree in the last 30 years, an increase far greater than anything in the past as shown from to ice cores going back 800,000 years.

Science tells us that the earth’s temperature should in fact be cooling as the change in the planet’s movement (angle of obliquity, precession, the shape of our orbit around the sun, the Milankovitch cycle) show we should be moving towards a cold period. The fact that the atmosphere is getting warmer (and the many resulting effects) is down to the burning of fossil fuels. There is no other scientific explanation. The Earth’s atmosphere is highly complex and its delicate balance has been disturbed. Some scientists now state that runaway global warming is inevitable and all we can do is minimize the horrid changes so it takes longer for the Earth to get like the planet Venus. According to Sir David Attenborough, all the independent scientific papers published in the last 20 years have warned of the extreme dangers but thankfully most scientists agree that if actions are taken now, we can save the planet. Let’s hope they are right for the sake of our grandchildren.

I’ve less to say about religion. There are many, some believing they are the only true faith. Most religious leaders state that humans should not harm God’s planet.

Nations can never come up with a global agreement on climate change until everyone takes responsibility for their emissions. We need to burn much less fossil fuel and use renewable sources of energy instead. The politicians must move away from always thinking about winning their next election and instead provide leadership to prevent global disaster.

David Young
The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.