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

Not sure what you mean mate, evolution takes a long time, millions of years so what evidence is there for this? I suppose you could say that by keeping people some alive the natural selection mechanism has been prevented from removing unviable genes but there hasn't been long enough since medical science began to actually measure it's effects in Darwinian evolutionary terms.

From the rest of your post it sounds like an argument for shrugging your shoulders and doing fck all. Unfortunately that stance is all too common so that your self-fulfilling prophesy will inevitably come true.

 

But isn't it worse to do nothing?

 

I have to say, as a very minor side point, the amount of packaging that still isn't recyclable is outrageous.

 

There's too many people in the developed world over producing and over consuming.

 

Following the IPCC report on climate change, has anyone committed to doing anything more/different to reduce their personal impact on the planet, emissions or nature?

 

Why do people with no climate change knowledge who glibly state that "it's a natural cycle", insist that people with climate change knowledge are wrong?

 

And it’s rising exponentially, currently around 6.5 billion… and rising at about 1.5% per year. It was only about 4 billion people in 1970.

 

Evolution takes generations of the species. For fruit flies with a 24-hour lifespan, evolution can be seen within weeks or months. For humans with a lifespan approaching centuries, the effects of evolution would start to appear within 500-1000 years. Over the last century, people in the west have gotten taller and fatter, but this is dietary (and other) factors rather than evolutionary.

I do believe however, that evolution doesn't just take place in the individual but also in the species. So as the individuals evolve so does the requirements for the collective.

 

The single best thing you can do is to not have kids. This goes against the biological imperative to reproduce, so the next best thing is to limit your progeny to one birth.

 

You came so, so close to managing a post on climate change without having a pop at Greta Thunberg and then you blew it.

What is it about her that riles boomer types so much?

 

Technology got us here and technology will get us out of it. Ironically, it'll probably be China that leads the way.
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Although you can attempt to skew a graphs axis to suit, there are numerous examples of population growth and temperature growth following similar curves.

It's the elephant in the room. How do you reduce emissions when there are ever more consumers and emitters? How can natural habitat be protected when man forever needs more land to live on, land to grow/rear food on and land to travel on?

How can we save oceans when we use and pollute them more as goods increase to meet demand?

How can we keep the air clean as air traffic and airports grow year on year (pandemic aside!)?

It's perhaps ironic that we cull any species we deem to be too prevalent and therefore invasive to our existence.

 

Evolution ONLY takes place in the species, an individual physically can't evolve, the individual dies with the same genes it was born with....

 

If you take just emissions and population....

https://www.climate2020.org.uk/population-climate-change/

 

I disagree with this. People got us here, and technology so far just gets us in deeper muddles.

Plastic was seen as a way to reduce the amounts of trees we cut down. And now we see the effects of plastic in our oceans and soil.

Some tech solutions involve pumping gases into the air to reflect solar energy... what could possibly go wrong? Some involve extracting carbon from the air and burying it underground. What could possibly go wrong?

Some want to pump it under the ocean... I mean, I'm sure excess carbon in bedrock and any leaching into the oceans couldn't possibly disrupt anything!

And we have sheets of solar panels... though greener, what effect does having lots of shiny surfaces on our planet do and does it impact nature at all? Similarly, wind turbines. Greener, but scarring the earth and what impact on birds and insects?

I don't think we'll be able to help climate change merely plateau, because as a race, humans only take extremely hard decisions and act when disaster occurs. It's likely already too late. That we haven't come up with a global action plan yet despite the position we're in demonstrates we're so far from being able to fix this, even in a way that only slightly affects the global population.

 

I'm a boomer. She doesn't rile me. Just because you were born in the 60s doesn't automatically mean you're a right wing reactionary.

 

Nice straw man OP.
No-one ever said that climate change "wasn't real", we know that the climate changes as we've been through several ice ages, it's just that some people don't think it's "man-made" or they think it's being exaggerated by the rich and powerful as part of an agenda to become even more rich and powerful.

 

Hundreds of world leading climate scientists published a paper this week that stated that the evidence linking man to climate change is now unequivocal.

 

But you're only thinking short term and with current technologies. We didn't know that CO2 was an issue. Now we do, we will do something about it. Imagine a CO2 absorption / conversion machine for every person on the planet (and more). Plastic is a fantastic material it just needs to be made fully re-cyclable and from bio carbon (or carbon from a CO2 converter).

 

But this is the problem. Our hubris and self confidence. We just continue doing what we do and believe or hope technology gets us out of our latest mess.

Throw this forward. Imagine a world with double the population (that's likely 2150-2200). Where do they all live, how do we create homes for all those people that don't boost emissions, where do we grow the food, how do we have enough water? How do we prevent natural habitat being decimated and pushing more species closer to oblivion? How do we deal with ice melt and rising sea levels? How do we stop Brazil destroying the Amazon (now its no longer a carbon sink)? How do we stop the thawing of the permafrost and release of tonnes of methane? How do we prevent the gulf stream shifting to "slow mode"? How d we stop the oceans warming? How do we afford to rehouse people on flood plains? How do we find ways to stop flash flooding that overwhelms concreted built up streets? How do we limit soil erosion and prevent mudslides following wild fires? And so so many more issues that technology isn't going to get us out of.

Everything we do, we create another problem. And its the planet that pays for it. I'm sure we will think we've found a technological "cure", but what problems will they create instead?