to appeal vs to like When 'to appeal' is used in the meaning of 'to like', is it exactly the same to say one or the other, or is there a different shade of meaning (nuance)? For instance: opera doesn't appeal to him - he does't like opera. His proposal appeals to me - I like his proposal.

fine grained Is the expression 'fine grained' only referred to materials or can it also be referred to abstract things, such as an explanation, a classification, the details of a theory, etc.? I mean, can that expression have a figurative meaning?

Handy-dandy? I've read that expression is said when doing the play of hiding something in one of your fist, and asking another person to guess in which fist the object is. But what does it mean exactly? Taking each word singularly doesn't tell me much. Furthermore, I came across it used as an adjective as well. What does it mean that something is "handy-dandy"?

A difficult English grammar point I started a discussion called "help! A difficult English grammar point", the link is: https://www.italki.com/discussion/172636 I wanted to put it here, in the 'questions', but I put it in the 'discussions' because...there wasn't enough room here to write the question's details! You can also answer me here, if you want!

Help! A difficult English grammar point

I was looking for people who support the climate change theory and for people who instead denies it, and I came across this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrWznOFq38s

At minute 1:54 of the video Lord Monckton (Viscount of Brenchley, he's British), on the left, says:

"...and they predicted that by 2025 there WOULD HAVE BEEN one Celsius of warming compared with 1990. Well, it's not even going to be half of that. The rate of global warming is not much more than a half of what they originally predicted".

My question is: why did Lord Monckton say: "WOULD HAVE BEEN"?

He 'reported a prediction' (about the FUTURE of course) spoken in the PAST, and If he used a structure with 'WOULD', he was imagining an original 'direct speech' with 'WILL', that is the future simple 'WILL BE':

"by 2025 there WILL BE one Celsius of warming...".

But as far as I know, the future 'WILL BE' should become the structure 'WOULD BE' in the reported speech.

However, Lord Monckton maybe could also have imagined the original words as a 'conditional sentence' implying an 'if-clause':

"by 2025 there WOULD BE one Celsius of warming...(if we continued with this amount of CO2 emission...etc.)".

Could the fact (according to him) that the prediction came out false have made him say 'WOULD HAVE BEEN' (conditional perfect)?

The conditional 'WOULD BE' can become 'WOULD HAVE BEEN' if the hypothesis that was made in the past was 'unreal':

"if I had 10 million I WOULD BE rich"  -  "he said that if he had had 10 million he WOULD HAVE BEEN rich".

But, as far as I know, the hypothesis must be 'unreal' AT THE MOMENT IT WAS SAID, and not to come out false later, to make someone use the 'conditional perfect' in the reported speech.

Or am I wrong?

pundit Every time I come across the term 'pundit' (in the meaning of 'opinionist') I note it's used with mockery or contempt. Can it also be used in a neutral way?

What's a "red herring"? I heard an American public speaker saying that when he's debating with somebody, they very often have a "red herring" in order to try to distract him from the main point of the conversation, and then he made an example of somebody who, while debating with him, mentioned a past situation which had nothing to do with the (then) current situation. So, what does it mean exactly "red herring" in a figurative sense? Does it mean generically "anything used to distract people from the main point", or, more specifically, "a reference to the past, made with the purpose of distracting people from the main point"? And is it also a British expression? Thank you.

What were you doing before you left Cambridge? If I change that sentence to "what had you been doing", would it be correct in that case to say "before you left Cambridge", or should I necessarily say "until you left Cambridge"?

I used to know Hi, is the following sentence correct? 'at that time I used to know a lot of people'.