Climate change policy

[ey_tony]

That's the whole point - we know that we don't know, and therefore we exercise judgement as to who is most likely right. The odd thing is those who think the little they know gives them sufficient information to challenge the vast scientific consensus. Again, we saw this repeatedly with covid. It's just silly.

I've got a relevant degree which gives me the background to understand the subject matter plus I've followed the subject for over 30 years so I'd hardly call that a little knowledge.
What is your background on the subject such that you can take sides?
In 1912, Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of tectonic plate movement but the consensus of the majority of his peers claimed he was completely mad and ridiculed the idea...it wasn't until the 1960s that his theory was validated...the vast majority of his peers disagreed and they were proved wrong so don't assume that because they use the word consensus that it's true!

 

[ey_tony]

Maybe you could point us toward some of your published research in the field instead?

Better still, publish your scientific background which qualifies you to comment on the subject with such authority!

 

[Chris152]

Better still, publish your scientific background which qualifies you to comment on the subject with such authority!

For heavens sake, Tony - I've said nothing on the subject, let alone with authority. You're completely missing the point.

 

[Jacob]

As I've said, I understand the subject in depth, clearly you don't so I'll not waste my time arguing with you.

Sorry to say it but you come over as a compete idiot. Maybe it's a matter of presentation?

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I am entirely content to accept the scientific consensus that climate change is a major threat to humanity in the medium to long term. I am also supportive of those actions being taken to mitigate probable impacts - be it green energy, recycling, reduced environmental exploitation etc.

Short term - say less than 50 years - some communities will be affected, but for most of the 8bn (soon to be 11-12bn) of us it will pass substantially unnoticed. I am therefore not convinced it is the major immediate threat - choose from:.

• nuclear or biological based conflict
• pandemic - we have seen what happened when covid struck
• malicious or uncontrolled exploitation of AI
• terrorist action
• gross over exploitation of natural resources
• agricultural monoculture failures impacting food production
• over population creating water, food and resource stresses

There may be others of similar potential impact. There may be a diversity of views over which are the greater or lesser threat.

Climate Change concerns have dominated discussion, action and funding to the substantial exclusion of all other threats. This is a disproportionate response - other threats many of which are very much more immediate, should take priority.

 

[Jacob]

I am entirely content to accept the scientific consensus that climate change is a major threat to humanity in the medium to long term. I am also supportive of those actions being taken to mitigate probable impacts - be it green energy, recycling, reduced environmental exploitation etc.

Short term - say less than 50 years - some communities will be affected, but for most of the 8bn (soon to be 11-12bn) of us it will pass substantially unnoticed. I am therefore not convinced it is the major immediate threat - choose from:.

• nuclear or biological based conflict
• pandemic - we have seen what happened when covid struck
• malicious or uncontrolled exploitation of AI
• terrorist action
• gross over exploitation of natural resources
• agricultural monoculture failures impacting food production
• over population creating water, food and resource stresses

There may be others of similar potential impact. There may be a diversity of views over which are the greater or lesser threat.

Climate Change concerns have dominated discussion, action and funding to the substantial exclusion of all other threats. This is a disproportionate response - other threats many of which are very much more immediate, should take priority.

The difference between the items on your list and climate change is that the latter is happening already and appears to be irreversible, so far at least, and probably with far greater and more permanent consequences than your list items.

 

[Blackswanwood]

I am entirely content to accept the scientific consensus that climate change is a major threat to humanity in the medium to long term. I am also supportive of those actions being taken to mitigate probable impacts - be it green energy, recycling, reduced environmental exploitation etc.

Short term - say less than 50 years - some communities will be affected, but for most of the 8bn (soon to be 11-12bn) of us it will pass substantially unnoticed. I am therefore not convinced it is the major immediate threat - choose from:.

• nuclear or biological based conflict
• pandemic - we have seen what happened when covid struck
• malicious or uncontrolled exploitation of AI
• terrorist action
• gross over exploitation of natural resources
• agricultural monoculture failures impacting food production
• over population creating water, food and resource stresses

There may be others of similar potential impact. There may be a diversity of views over which are the greater or lesser threat.

Climate Change concerns have dominated discussion, action and funding to the substantial exclusion of all other threats. This is a disproportionate response - other threats many of which are very much more immediate, should take priority.

I don't disagree with your list. Several items though are interlinked with climate change so doing what we can to address it should be just as high as a priority.

 

[DrPhill]

As I've said, I understand the subject in depth, clearly you don't so I'll not waste my time arguing with you.

I am open to valid counter-arguments. I would desperately like climate change to be a hoax as the future for the planet would look a lot brighter.

Unfortunately 99.9+% of peer-reviewed science agrees that mankind is damaging the climate.

If you have strong evidence to the contrary then I beg to share it with us. If you say ‘I have proof but I’m not going to share it with anyone’ is it any wonder that we doubt position?

 

[John Brown]

Better still, publish your scientific background which qualifies you to comment on the subject with such authority!

You still haven't told us how many successful businesses you've run..

 

[DrPhill]

Short term - say less than 50 years - some communities will be affected, but for most of the 8bn (soon to be 11-12bn) of us it will pass substantially unnoticed.

“around the world. Nearly 4 in 10 people (39%) live within 100 kilometres from a shoreline and are at risk of flooding if sea levels continue to rise. ”

“Even if we cut emissions, sea levels will continue to rise until the year 2100 ”

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/effects-of-climate-change

 

[Spectric]

Can we please stick with the topic of climate change and just accept that there are many different perspectives and opinions on this subject so let's just keep it freindly.

I am open to valid counter-arguments. I would desperately like climate change to be a hoax as the future for the planet would look a lot brighter.

For climate change to be a hoax would mean that you would need to believe that having a global population that has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to now over 8 billion has had no impact and having 1.5 billion vehicles on the planet along with mass industrialisation has all made no change, seems a little unrealistic to believe. Now add into the equation the fact we have burnt billions of tonnes of coal and consumed vast amounts of fossil fuels so realistically all of this must have had an impact on the planet, it is just not possible for all this to have had zero impact.

 

[Spectric]

“Even if we cut emissions, sea levels will continue to rise until the year 2100 ”

Yes many people have said that even applying the brakes hard now would not have much effect, the ball has been set in motion and will stop when it stops.

So accepting change is happening and even if we had the ability to do anything about it there seems little will power by governments to cooperate to resolve and take more interest in confrontation then what is the final destination ?

We know that we are losing many species of wildlife and plants already and that human existance is dependant upon our enviroment and all life within so the question that should be asked is are we on our way or have we already entered the sixth extinction event ?

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-mass-extinction-and-are-we-facing-a-sixth-one.html

 

[Agent_zed]

Excuse my ignorance but I don’t get this, you are still going to have the same degradation if not more so if all the cars are EV’s ?

My point was not in relation to changing cars from fossil fuels to EV. It is that people bemoan any 'green' policy and often go to the argument that climate change is not a thing or that anthropogenic CO2 isn't a driving factor. Driving less miles in either vehicle not only reduces CO2 and particulate emissions from the energy needed to move the vehicle but from all of the other peripherals such as tyres, brakes, servicing, space parts, road resurfacing etc etc. I see people driving their kids to school in the morning that live <0.5 mile from the school. Most people drive to the shops that are again often <1m from their house. I'm certainly not perfect but if i need to drive somewhere I try and combine it with another job to minimise trips.

In terms of fossil fuels -> EVs, I have long gone on about how it is not the answer in it's current offering. We are just replacing one thing with something that is possibly only slightly better. What needs to happen is a complete rethink around our transport systems, more public tansport for a start. If people have private vehicles then they should be much smaller. Most people drive a 1ton+ car with <100kg of person. The future shouldn't be giant teslas, they should be renault twizy's (or something similar in concept). Apart from anything else if you halved the size of most current cars traffic and parking would be significantly better for everyone.

 

[DrPhill]

We are just replacing one thing with something that is possibly only slightly better. What needs to happen is a complete rethink around our transport systems, more public tansport for a start. If people have private vehicles then they should be much smaller.

This.

 

[ey_tony]

I am open to valid counter-arguments. I would desperately like climate change to be a hoax as the future for the planet would look a lot brighter.

Unfortunately 99.9+% of peer-reviewed science agrees that mankind is damaging the climate.

If you have strong evidence to the contrary then I beg to share it with us. If you say ‘I have proof but I’m not going to share it with anyone’ is it any wonder that we doubt position?

I'm not denying that we are seeing climatic changes but the climate has never been and never will be stable so it's how much impact anthropgenic input is actually having compared to the effects of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses which allegedly contributes to GW, not to mention external solar influences on temperature for which there are no actual academic definitive answers which is the problem.
The modelling is all very vague with too much uncertainty to be remotely reliable.

If we are basing future economic decisions based on vague or questionable data then we could do irreparable harm to our economy in the longer term which will do little or nothing to help people if we get it wrong.

You just have to go back to the 1970s when the academic consensus was that we were on the verge of a return to another ice age, what happened to that consensus?

 

[Spectric]

We are just replacing one thing with something that is possibly only slightly better.

At the end of the day to make something move requires energy, ICE uses fossil fuels and EV's use power generated somewhere else so unless that source of power is solar or wind then it has just created pollution elsewhere. Ev's tend to be heavier so will consume tyres and road surfaces more, so the idea of being 100% green and clean is never going to happen, if we get to 85% it would make a huge difference just probably to late.

 

[Spectric]

If we are basing future economic decisions based on vague or questionable data then we could do irreparable harm to our economy in the longer term which will do little or nothing to help people if we get it wrong.

If we just ignore any thoughts of global warming and continue as we always have then the destination will still be the same, we are not going to change that come what may and for some it might just be a better but shorter life whilst for others they become extinct. If an end goal is fixed then make life as nice as possible until that endpoint rather than miserable and hard.

 

[DrPhill]

I'm not denying that we are seeing climatic changes but the climate has never been and never will be stable so it's how much impact anthropgenic input is actually having compared to the effects of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses which allegedly contributes to GW, not to mention external solar influences on temperature for which there are no actual academic definitive answers which is the problem.

"Earth's climate has changed throughout history. In the past 650,000 years, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era—and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that alter the amount of energy our planet receives from the sun. But the warming we've seen over the past few decades is too rapid to be linked to changes in Earth's orbit and too large to be caused by solar activity.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming. Carbon dioxide from human activity is increasing more than 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last ice age."

https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu...e-climate-change?trk=public_post_comment-text

"Analysis shows that for 800,000 years, atmospheric CO2 did not rise above 300 parts per million (ppm). But since the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration has soared to its current level of nearly 420 ppm.
Computer simulations, known as climate models, have been used to show what would have happened to temperatures without the massive amounts of greenhouse gases released by humans.

They reveal there would have been little global warming - and possibly some cooling - over the 20th and 21st Centuries, if only natural factors had been influencing the climate.
Only when human factors are introduced can the models explain increases in temperature."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58954530

"Rigorous analysis of all data and lines of evidence shows that most of the observed global warming over the past 50 years or so cannot be explained by natural causes and instead requires a significant role for the influence of human activities."

https://royalsociety.org/news-resou...nge-evidence-causes/basics-of-climate-change/

"In its 2013 fifth assessment report, the IPCC stated in its summary for policymakers that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature” from 1951 to 2010 was caused by human activity. By “extremely likely”, it meant that there was between a 95% and 100% probability that more than half of modern warming was due to humans."

quoted in https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-scientists-think-100-of-global-warming-is-due-to-humans/

 

[DrPhill]

If we just ignore any thoughts of global warming and continue as we always have then the destination will still be the same, we are not going to change that coome what may and for some it might just be a better but shorter life whilst for others they become extinct. If an end goal is fixed then make life as nice as possible until that endpoint rather than miserable and hard.

Ahh, the new denialism. First we had "Its not happening, It's not caused by humans.We shouldn't do anything' Now we get "Well, it is happening, and we can't stop it anyway so we shouldn't do anything'. Only one part of the message stays constant.....

 

[DrPhill]

There is a consensus among scientists that humans are responsible for climate change:

Quoted in https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/scientific-consensus/

American Association for the Advancement of Science​

"Based on well-established evidence, about 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening." (2014)3

American Chemical Society​

"The Earth’s climate is changing in response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and particulate matter in the atmosphere, largely as the result of human activities." (2016-2019)4

American Geophysical Union​

"Based on extensive scientific evidence, it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. There is no alterative explanation supported by convincing evidence." (2019)5

American Medical Association​

"Our AMA ... supports the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report and concurs with the scientific consensus that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that anthropogenic contributions are significant." (2019)6

American Meteorological Society​

"Research has found a human influence on the climate of the past several decades ... The IPCC (2013), USGCRP (2017), and USGCRP (2018) indicate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century." (2019)7

American Physical Society​

"Earth's changing climate is a critical issue and poses the risk of significant environmental, social and economic disruptions around the globe. While natural sources of climate variability are significant, multiple lines of evidence indicate that human influences have had an increasingly dominant effect on global climate warming observed since the mid-twentieth century." (2015)8

The Geological Society of America​

"The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2011), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (Melillo et al., 2014) that global climate has warmed in response to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases ... Human activities (mainly greenhouse-gas emissions) are the dominant cause of the rapid warming since the middle 1900s (IPCC, 2013)." (2015)9