Total Recall... excellent stuff! I watched it again the other night, having bought it and a whole bunch of other cheesy Arnie films off Amazon for about £3 a pop for my sorry collection (the film buffs here would be distinctly unimpressed I feel, as indeed is Mrs C). I reckon JohnnyCabs on Mars are deffo the way forward.

"See you at ze party, Richter!11!"

Well, the annual pre-budget report has canned the 3p fuel duty rise in January and has announced that there will be a consultation into offering tax incentives for Shale Gas mining. That's going to piss off the Green lobby.

Details, mere details. If we set out to colonize mars as a national priority the benefits are:

Science and engineering sectors get a boost of resources.
Spaceships.
This will draw talent to the UK.
More spaceships.
This will improve the UK economy.
Awesome spaceships.
Deprived areas become developed as more emphasis is put on education to be part of this project.
Moral behaviour becomes the norm.
Spaceships.
The booming economy promotes internal and external investments in regions.
Foreign governments tender for contracts.
More spaceships.
Spin off tech reduces carbon dependency.

Basically, we can solve many social and economic problems by moving now to colonize mars. And then the uk will have mars. And spaceships.

It's a shame no one ever consults me on this.

Details, mere details. If we set out to colonize mars as a national priority the benefits are:

Science and engineering sectors get a boost of resources.
Spaceships.
This will draw talent to the UK.
More spaceships.
This will improve the UK economy.
Awesome spaceships.
Deprived areas become developed as more emphasis is put on education to be part of this project.
Moral behaviour becomes the norm.
Spaceships.
The booming economy promotes internal and external investments in regions.
Foreign governments tender for contracts.
More spaceships.
Spin off tech reduces carbon dependency.

Basically, we can solve many social and economic problems by moving now to colonize mars. And then the uk will have mars. And spaceships.

It's a shame no one ever consults me on this.

I'm always hugely amused by the way the government bigs up the UK "space economy",

Every time I pass the sign on the M1 to the 'National Space Centre' with the little emblem of a rocket, I quietly dream about what might have been.

Every time I pass the sign on the M1 to the 'National Space Centre' with the little emblem of a rocket, I quietly dream about what might have been.

I laughed out loud yesterday when I saw the actual flight path of El Reg's failed LOHAN test flight.

Still, it counts as a space programme. Ish.

No one ever consults the Stainless Steel Rat.

“Wheat is a cool-season crop. High temperatures are negative for its growth and quality, no doubt about it,” says Frank Manthey, a professor at North Dakota State University who advises the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Already, a mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global temperature rise over the past 50 years has caused a 5.5 percent decline in wheat production, according to David Lobell, a professor at Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

By 2050, scientists project, the world’s leading wheat belts—the U.S. and Canadian Midwest, northern China, India, Russia, and Australia—on average will experience, every other year, a hotter summer than the hottest summer now on record. Wheat production in that period could decline between 23 and 27 percent, reports the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), unless swift action is taken to limit temperature rise and develop crop varieties that can tolerate a hotter world.

If the world ends next Friday it might be for the best.

Did anyone else see this?

"There is consistent evidence from observations of a net energy uptake of the earth system due to an imbalance in the energy budget. It is virtually certain that this is caused by human activities, primarily by the increase in CO2 concentrations. There is very high confidence that natural forcing contributes only a small fraction to this imbalance."

The sudden release from the melting Arctic of vast quantities of methane – a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide –is an “economic time-bomb” that could explode at a cost of $60 trillion (£40tr) to the global economy, a study has concluded.

A scientific assessment of the costs associated with the release of Arctic methane into the atmosphere has found that the financial consequences to the world would almost equal the entire global economic output of one year.

Scientists and economists said that the release of methane trapped for thousands of years beneath the frozen permafrost of the Arctic is one of the most dangerous “feedback” consequences of the rapid warming of the region, which has seen sea ice diminish by more than a third since the 1970s.

Estimates of how much methane could be released from the Arctic were based on joint Russian-American expeditions to the East Siberian Sea where scientists have measured vast plumes of methane bubbling to the sea surface from underground deposits stored beneath the permafrost of the seabed, which extends under the sea because the continental shelf here is relatively shallow.

Russian scientists have calculated that there may be as much as 50 billion tonnes of methane locked away beneath the permafrost of the East Siberian Sea. Methane is about 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100 year period and its sudden release could change the global climate significantly faster than current predictions, the scientists say.

For instance, a massive pulse of methane could bring forward by between 15 and 35 years the date when global average temperature exceed the “safe” limit of 2C above pre-industrial levels. This limit would be reached by 2035 if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gases or 2040 if emissions are lowered, the study found.

This resulted in the removal of 237 out of 453 products – 52 percent of the department's normal product mix. What's missing? There's a definitive lack of apples, avocados, bok choy, broccoli, broccoli rabe, cantaloupe, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, green onions, honeydew, kale, leeks, lemons, limes, mangos, mustard greens, onions, summer squash and zucchini — all foods that rely on bees.

"Pollinators are a critical link in our food system. More than 85 percent of earth's plant species – many of which compose some of the most nutritional parts of our diet – require pollinators to exist. Yet we continue to see alarming declines in bee numbers," said Eric Mader, assistant pollinator conservation director at the Xerces Society. "Our organization works with farmers nationwide to help them create wildflower habitat and adopt less pesticide-intensive practices. These simple strategies can tip the balance back in favor of bees."

From the same site, would also kill off the Tour de France!

I'm pretty sure that the last thing anyone is going to be giving a toss about is a bicycle race.

Genuine question:

Why can't we do what bees do? What part of the process do they provide that cannot be replicated by science?

By hand, sure - but can't we just spray pollen around? Not sure it's a job Curio would want to do, mind.

Can we not GM up a massive fucking pollen plant, harvest on an industrial scale, then basically use crop dusters to pollinate everything?

Obviously saving bees is better (if they promise not to sting me).

I'm pretty sure that the last thing anyone is going to be giving a toss about is a bicycle race.

By hand, sure - but can't we just spray pollen around? Not sure it's a job Curio would want to do, mind.

I'm more worried about chocolate, coffee, pasta, and more.

Your mum sprays her pollen around by hand.

You'd be expsoed to the same risks as huge monocultures, so would stilll need broad spectrum pesticides and whatnot.

Why can't we GM up a massive fucking pollen plant with preprogrammed genetic variation in its pollen production?