mike Meehan

An example of evolution in action - some survive the poisons, maybe because they do not ingest sufficient for a fatal dose but develop some immunity which carries over to succeeding generation - the trouble is they breed so fast that before you know it we have poison resistant rats - it doesn't stop there because we are getting the same thing happening with bacteria which become immune to certain antibiotics - then viruses continue to mutate so our vaccines can become ineffective - it's a constant battle.

When I was about 10 years of age, the school toilets were uncovered and the boys and the girls areas were separated by a brick wall. Our aim was to try and pee over this wall into the girl's part although we never did manage it - we were right little so and so's full of devilment in those days. Now in my much older more splattering days it probably is better to sit down at home but it is so much easier to use the traditional method. I must try to remember.

When we got stuck in a blizzard circa Jan 1954, then after that I was in the ATC and loved dodging the cumulus on those air experience flights

However it could be that that big rock drops off the side of one of the Canary Isles - Same advice still applies - keep well away from the south coast.

But only if you live above 500 feet, otherwise the tsunami will get you, particularly if you are located on the south coast.

Here we have two opposing ideas, the first being to develop an independence in energy supplies so we do not have to rely on politically unstable regions, then on the other hand we have the depletion of ground water caused by this fracking. To prioritise, water has to take precedence over energy since it is more vital for survival but at the same time for a modern society to function properly we must have power - the biggest problem is that we have too many people in the world which are putting strains on resources but to alter that situation barring any calamities will most likely take centuries, so our recourse is to try and make the best of what we have already whilst at the same time invest a lot more into research into sustainable energy so we are less reliant on imported fossil fuels. What with one thing and another we have got the world into a bit of mess and getting out of it ain't going to be easy when you consider the capriciousness of human nature but that should be our target.

Moomin, You have a valid point about SE England where the increased urbanisation paradoxically increases the prospects of floods and droughts because more water stays on the surface - perhaps what we should do here is to build the large cisterns such as they have in Holland which will take away excess surface water and provide reservoirs at the same time. As far as the Australian outback is concerned, although it is more industrialised now, the barriers preventing water seeping into the sub soil could only represent a minute fraction of what is a vast area but here as well as in other areas around the Pacific, even as far as the Indian sub continent I wonder how much the La Nina and El Nino events are having an effect - the clip only showed a time span of a few years, so I wonder what these events were doing and in any case it is going to take time for water on the surface to get down to the aquifers. As far as the Indian sub continent is concerned increases in population is bound to have an effect on abstraction and forest clearances plus urbanisation are not going to help either. In short in a lot of cases we need to find ways to stop the speed of the progress of the water falling on the land and travelling on its journey to the sea to allow it to filter into the soil and reach the aquifers.

Fantastic - definitely out of this world - the interesting thing is, what were the white patches? Ice or frozen CO2? - they appeared similar to the snow patches on north faces slopes of our Northern hemisphere.

I quite believe it and I suspect that the depletion of the aquifers is mainly caused by man's extraction of water that has been there in many cases for thousands of years - one day at this rate water will become more important than oil - we really need to explore the possibility of developing desalination plants powered by sustainable power - my favourite being solar power because usually there is plenty of it I the drier regions.

It is an interesting project - I am only too well aware, having installed PV panels at my home that they are at their most efficient when we need the energy least and if efficient and economical methods could be devised to store energy for domestic users it would help a lot. The only methods readily available to the domestic user are to i) use batteries but the cost of these is not economically viable and ii) to use the heat gained during the day to power an immersion heater in the hot water tank which could be economically viable but the amount of power stored would be limited by the size of the tank which would not really be very much, though it would add some savings in fuel costs to the normal domestic user and with the meteoric rise of prices just recently we need all the savings we can get.

I would say yes and no - there are many areas of the world which have the mix of continental/maritime/polar and equatorial influences, say Vancouver, Iceland, and Tasmania just to quote a few examples so they end up with changeable weather just as we do but there are none with exactly the same geography so there would be differences dictated by the local conditions.

I also wonder whether there is a possibility of this being an incomplete star I.e. a body which started off as an embryo star but just did not have sufficient mass to ignite the fusion process to make it into a proper star - after all the mass of different stars differs greatly, so just as we have extremely massive stars I see no reason why we should not have others which just do not make it to maturity.

No doubt if we carry on the same way as we are now we will reach the post anthropocene stage before too long -

Noticed that Moscows max yesterday was +2C - this seems rather early in the season for such a low temperature, though we will see what happens - I am fairly convinced that if you get the deep seated cold set in, in that part of the world, it will be very difficult to shift and we could well end up with the crumbs of a cold/snow feste.

I see we already have something of Scandie and Greenie Highs, the area to the north east of Moscow is now sub 528 mbs and I note that over the past few days Moscow's max's would not disgrace a normal winter's day over here, dropping to about 7C, so I ask myself whether this is a harbinger of things to come? Well established highs in these locations have the potential to bring us long lasting frigid conditions. There is little doubt that if we were to retain the current synoptic situation for the whole of the winter M & S would quickly run out of woolly knickers, so for you snow lovers there is hope - it all depends on how the jet streams are going to behave in the coming weeks and months.

I can't see that an exceptional mlld winter would be anything like enjoyable unless you happened to be a duck. For this to happen I would expect the wind mainly from a SW quadrant which would mean relatively warm moist air travelling over colder ground without enough power in the sun to warm this up significantly, so my guess is that it would lead to grey squelchy conditions with below average sunshine, especially during the early part - later as the sun gains some strength we could expect some drying out with more sunshine and a false spring developing, most likely to develop into cold northerlies with snow showers, such is the caprice of our climate.

I agree with what you say APS but my mind goes back to that original black hole, or that is what we suppose was the moment before the 'big bang' . My understanding of a black hole is that it is one way traffic only, matter etc goes in but none comes out and as the matter continues to feed it, it must become denser and the event horizon would expand outwards as it does so, so we end up witrh an escalating situation. However, there must have been some sort of trigger which caused that original black hole to become the big bang and develop into the universe as we know it today - but what would that trigger have been? Thinking off the top of my head it appears that there must have been an outside influence and the only one I can reasonably conceive at the moment would be some sort of interaction with a parrallel universe because otherwise apart from the black hole there does not appear to be anything else - in fact probably no time, no breadth, depth or width which may well have been 'born' with our universe. It seems to me that there is such a lot to find out and we only know a small percentage at the moment. Any further comment?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/black-hole-at-heart-of-our-galaxy-%E2%80%9Cwill-erupt-next-year%E2%80%9D--say-astronomers-104531562.html#Panagt7 Not totally sure I understood correctly but got the impression te Gamma Ray Bursts were eminating from INSIDE the black hole - is this possible? Then if you consider the big bang theory, the whole of the matter contained within the universe must have been inside a super massive black hole prior to the big bang.

I reckon Coxy would make a good job of presenting this - I always try to watch his programs when I can.

http://www.upworthy.com/people-should-know-about-this-awful-thing-we-do-and-most-of-us-are-simply-unaware?c=ufb1 I found this quite shocking really that we are polluting the planet to this extent.

I'd go and have a look but damn it I haven't got my anorak anymore.

aAll I can say is that great minds thought alike

Personally I find November and December the worst months of the year mostly they are grey, damp and cheerless. I look forward to January when often it gets drier and the days start getting longer - in my experience more fluffy snow - my favourite is likely then

Knickers! - you beat me to it

Not polar bears