Just in case anyone still doesn't believe that climate change is real...

Ah, so what China is doing is all our fault for starting the industrial revolution 200 years ago. There's no point leading the way if the biggest polluters on the planet don't follow

 

Phew, that's ok then!

I mean the ice sheets are melting, the arctic tundra and permafrost thawing, worsening wildfires and floods year on year, emissions continuing to rise, global temperatures rising, forests being lost, corals being bleached, erratic jet streams and water streams. Nature is being more affected year on year, species are at ever greater risk.

But if we look at a very limited graph of UK temperatures from an unnamed source on a very dubious website over a very short period... everything is fine! Maybe on there it even tells us brexit is the mother of all successes!

 

Couldn't have put it better myself.

As a former chemist and one that worked with infra-red spectrophotometers, I know what a fantastic absorber of inra-red radiation CO2 is.

 

Proper laughing after finding the source of this - https://facts4eu.org/news/2021_aug_cool_britannia

If that graph is correct (and I note there's no underlying data or link to it) you need to zoom out a bit - here's a handy colour visualisation:

 

That's basically a conspiracy website

 

It makes no sense to look at this at a country level, do you expect all countries to emit the same? Look at carbon emissions per head of population and there are many countries worse than China including the US and us
https://ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2

Time to stop blaming others and take responsibility. We need to reduce our carbon emissions, as individuals, as citizens of UK and as citizens of the world.

 

Ah, so what China is doing is all our fault for starting the industrial revolution 200 years ago. There's no point leading the way if the biggest polluters on the planet don't follow

I am not blaming others, all countries pollute, some more than others, I used China as an example of a country which will not under any circumstances stop polluting because thay do what the hell they want and nobody can force them to stop.
Citing per head of population is pointless, China produces 27% of the greenhouse gases and pumps more volume of it into the atmosphere than all other developed countries combined, but if you divide that by head of their population billions it's not so much, eh?

 

I watched the Climate Report findings this morning and the question and answer afterwards, no one asked the obvious and most important question ….. at Oakwell will we need to use the sprinklers more or less

 

If we're being selfish and saying it doesn't matter because if other countries then...

There is still a point to improving our sustainability as well as our measures to combat the effects of climate change. A recent study identified the UK as one of the 5 countries most capable of surviving the societal collapse we seem to be hurtling towards. Improving our self sustainability will improve our own chance of survival. While the peoples of Russia, China, India and the US suffer the consequences of their (and our) country's actions

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8161/htm

As an aside one of the things that annoys me is these politicians and journalists, often US republicans but there are plenty here too, who deny man made climate change and say what we're seeing us natural... Then refuse to invest in counter measures such as flood defences based on an argument that accepts climate change does happen. It's literal madness.

 

DIdnt say it'l be reyt. I dont like seeing what is happening anymore than you but i think the express train has left the station and ir running downhill fast without a break. I think we are on a one way ticket right now. The goverments around the world were saying 2050 to remove the polluters and that was obious it was too slow. All this moving to electric cars - its just hiding the problem as they still need to generate the leccy. Unless we harness natural energy more i dont think we'll see the benefit of it. And the electric cars will offer up a new environmental issue - whats gonna happen to all these batteries etc when they are dead? How much of those can be recycled?

 

You also have the fact of say moving to paper bags, putting charges on plastic bags etc - but i'll bet it just the supermarkets making cash out of that! How much of thet 10-20p goes to environmental issues? A plastic bag can be re-used many times but a paper bag once - twice if you are lucky. The energy to produce and recycle paper exceeds that of the plastic bag. Again - hidden numbers.

 

You might be right there but that is not a reason to shrug your shoulders and carry on producing tons of CO2...

We're in the last chance saloon on that runaway train, we should be helping the guard apply the brakes.

 

https://www.express.co.uk/news/weat...st-europe-wildfire-spain-latest-greece-turkey

Crazy heat. The hottest ever temperature ever recorded in Europe was 48 degrees in Athens in 1977. There is a chance that might get beat somewhere this week. Our planet is in grave danger of reaching the point of no return to do something about it. The youth of today the way things are going are in for a **** existence when you think what the planet will be like for them when they are old themselves. It's in a bad enough state as it is.

 

Not defending China - their human rights record is terrible, but we've effectively outsourced much of our manufacturing over there - and still their average emissions per person is half that of the USA, whose military alone emits more CO2 than 140 countries.

 

the point in making is we need to lead the way, and trust that they will folliw. Not just say" but China" and do b ugger all about it ourselves.

 

Theres 2 many people on planet aswell, get ready somethings gonna happen.

 

Not really . It's more a case of how we live our lives that seems to be the problem . Is it the richest 1% create more carbon emissions than the poorest 50% , something like that anyway . Sadly the richest 1% pretty much control how we live our lives so unless that changes then I don't see much else changing over the coming years .

 

Am I a climate change denier? NO!

Do I believe humans have accelerated a naturally occurring cycle in climate fluctuations between Ice ages (mini and major)? YES!

Do I believe it is within our power to change that in any meaningful way ? NO!
Human nature and the entire structure of societies , Governments' National self interests will never be co-ordinated enough to have a meaningful cohesion to tackle it. Electrification, e.g. EVs, carbon neutral piecemeal policies undertaken by random governments is just tinkering round the edges.

DO I believe that the only solution is massive depopulation of our planet? YES!

Do I believe that can be achieved through human intervention ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I know for years tax incentives were used in some developed countries like Singapore which has (used to have?) a policy for tax relief for one child, loss of that tax relief if you had another one and progressively punitive tax for each additional child ?
In the first instance in third World/developing countries such policies would have no effect and so, again, it is simply tinkering round the edges. Dystopian solutions like compulsory sterilisation or euthanasia for people reaching a certain age are reserved solely for Sci-Fi novels and films for obvious reasons.

Ultimately nature will redress the balance. Countless species have evolved and become extinct. For all man's arrogance, why should the human species be any different except for the fact that, probably for the first time a species will be the architect of its own downfall.
We have already 'cheated' the natural order inasmuch as we are the only species on the planet to have stopped evolving due to medical science. Survival of the fittest whereby the gene pool was strengthened as faulty genes gradually died out. We are all ultimately a perfect example of built in obsolescence but people now with what would have been terminal genetic flaws are able to extend their lives and procreate passing those faulty genes onto the next generation. Don't misunderstand me. I am not for one minutes saying we should do anything else but we have taken a path down a dead end road in doing so.

My final point is I genuinely believe that those stating that we are destroying the planet are wrong. The Earth will continue to spin long after humans have disappeared. It may not be the Earth we consider as normal but then it never was. We only see the Earth as it is in the very short timespan we have existed. It is a very different Earth to what came before and will probably be after our demise.

Sorry if all this sounds depressing. Whilst we should not ignore future generations -certainly not take an 'Eat, Drink and be merry - for tomorrow we die' attitude, all the moral hand wringing and calls for draconian measures from ER people and others (yes Greta I am talking about you) which IMO for reasons I have outlined are ultimately doomed to failure. All the current proposed strategies are like applying sun cream after you have already got badly sunburnt (an apt analogy?!)
We can all do our bit...recycling etc. but still live our lives as , after all , we don't get very long on this planet to enjoy it. Have a good one!

 

In 2003 I was in Madrid, the temperature was 46C, very unpleasant to say the least.