COP26 progress or same old

[transatlantic]

It infuriates me that the people with the most control in dealing with the matter won't .. because it will affect their profit margins.

Do they not have children? grand children? ... can't they see that it doesn't matter how much profit they make now if it will adversly affect the lives of their descendants several years from now?

Another annoyance I have is with the sudden realisation people have had with non recyclable plastics. Surely, ... surely!!! the moment they were invented, the question of how we would deal with the waste has to have arisen? it's not hindsight ... its common sense.

 

[doctor Bob]

I'm not going to enter the debate, but my opinion is you only have to take a good look around at everyday life and realise we are now on course to screw it all up. I'm really working hard to do my bit, but I doubt it will make any difference in the big scheme.

 

[Flynnwood]

Elon Musk- “The Universe Appears To Be 13.8 Billion Years Old.”
50 seconds >>>>

 

[Jameshow]

Elon Musk- “The Universe Appears To Be 13.8 Billion Years Old.”
50 seconds >>>>

Id never thought if that ....!

Probably why I'm not a billionaire!?

 

[Jacob]

Yanis puts his finger on it? Cop26 is doomed, and the hollow promise of ‘net zero’ is to blame | Yanis Varoufakis

 

[Flynnwood]

Id never thought if that ....!

Probably why I'm not a billionaire!?

A Million seconds is 11 days.
A Billion seconds is 33 years.
A Trillion seconds is 32,000 years (depending if there are leap years involved).

 

[D_W]

Another annoyance I have is with the sudden realisation people have had with non recyclable plastics. Surely, ... surely!!! the moment they were invented, the question of how we would deal with the waste has to have arisen? it's not hindsight ... its common sense.

I think we need to be a little bit more realistic about what the real problem is with plastics. In the US, about 1 unit out of 7 of recyclable plastics finds a taker. That means the other 6 go to the dump. All the while the recycling farce makes people believe that they are buying these plastics and then they're just getting put back into the system when they're done. The waste collectors and recycling centers like it because they get paid to handle the stuff, and it's an obligatory charge for us (in our garbage).

Realistically, what should we do, worry about some units of non-recyclable? There shouldn't be most of it in the first place. Really - bottled water? It's trash, but not the right kind - it's filth - complete waste. Why does anyone who is not standing next to a well full of parasites need to drink water out of a bottle? Did they have bottled water on the tables at this event? I'll bet they did.

This is yet another instance where thrift beats virtue signaling. Why pay for water in the first place when it costs $10 for a charcoal filter that will filter 300 gallons from the utility leaving nothing to throw away?

 

[D_W]

https://disasterdisplacement.org/displacement-at-the-katowice-climate-change-conference
of course - stylish plastic water bottles on the table. I wonder what % get recycled - and I don't mean go to the recycling center, but that actually returned into the consumer goods market.

In the US, it's cheaper to get blanks from virgin plastics than it is to get secondary market plastics and make bottles. It's a farce.

We never used that stuff when I was a kid - I think we had the same cups for the last 14 years of my pre-college life. And there was nothing "eco" about my parents. We burned our paper instead of sending it to the dump, recycled the steel and aluminum and had not much garbage left over.

 

[Jacob]

Who are these scientists and where can we read them?
There's Piers Corbyn. Is that it then? Piers Corbyn disrupts climate debate featuring brother Jeremy
He's also anti vaccination, Covid sceptic and voted for brexit!
Being several sandwiches short of a picnic seems to be par for the course!!

Any more CC sceptical scientists? Just Bellamy and Corbyn? Is that it then? Nigel Lawson doesn't count he's not a scientist.

Google doesn't help much it just shows paid lobbyists (or nutters):

https://www.beforetheflood.com/explore/the-deniers/top-10-climate-deniers/
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php

 

[John Brown]

I think we need to be a little bit more realistic about what the real problem is with plastics. In the US, about 1 unit out of 7 of recyclable plastics finds a taker. That means the other 6 go to the dump. All the while the recycling farce makes people believe that they are buying these plastics and then they're just getting put back into the system when they're done. The waste collectors and recycling centers like it because they get paid to handle the stuff, and it's an obligatory charge for us (in our garbage).

Realistically, what should we do, worry about some units of non-recyclable? There shouldn't be most of it in the first place. Really - bottled water? It's trash, but not the right kind - it's filth - complete waste. Why does anyone who is not standing next to a well full of parasites need to drink water out of a bottle? Did they have bottled water on the tables at this event? I'll bet they did.

This is yet another instance where thrift beats virtue signaling. Why pay for water in the first place when it costs $10 for a charcoal filter that will filter 300 gallons from the utility leaving nothing to throw away?

We are lucky in that our tap water is potable. I know a lot of people buy bottled, but it is no better in most cases, sometimes worse.

 

[J-G]

We are lucky in that our tap water is potable. I know a lot of people buy bottled, but it is no better in most cases, sometimes worse.

Not only 'not better' - it is apparently positively worse. I understand that there is little or no bottled water which would be allowed to be provided to our taps - Perrier has (apparently) 7 times too much salt, and another brand 50 times too much Uranium!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The spoof Perrier advert in Private Eye 20 years or so ago - carcin eau genic.

 

[John Brown]

The spoof Perrier advert in Private Eye 20 years or so ago - carcin eau genic.

And yet, amazingly, they shrugged it off, apparently with little damage to their popularity.
I was likewise amazed at how either Coke or Pepsi (I can't remember which)recovered from the DasaniGate.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I can buy the proposition that humanity is changing the climate and the environment:

• we are burning as fossil fuels in the space of a few hundred years that which took a few hundred million years to lay down
• we are changing the surface of the planet through mining and building roads, cities, cutting down trees, polluting rivers and oceans etc etc.

These habits will make planet earth a far less pleasant place for human survival.

Climate models are hugely complex with multiple feedback loops which are very sensitive to embedded assumptions - eg: the interaction between the natural carbon cycle which generates about 95% of CO2 vs human activity 5%.

Weather (rain, wind, cloud cover etc) is driven by heat all of which increase due to greenhouse gases. Increased precipitation is apparently not falling as snow and thus glaciers retreat, increased cloud cover is not reflecting more sunlight, desertification is increasing despite more rainfall. Some of this is counter-intuitive (but not necessarily wrong).

Output is unremittingly negative with no attention to positive aspects of climate change - eg: northern Canada and Russia become more fertile, fish can swim to populate new breeding grounds as oceans warm, more rainfall may be welcome in many places, agricultural practice and crops can evolve to suit changed growing conditions etc etc.

The balance of impacts may still be negative - but more balanced reporting and analysis may encourage greater acceptance of changes needed. Consistently skewed output promotes denial, not rational debate.

 

[Jacob]

I can buy the proposition that humanity is changing the climate and the environment:

• we are burning as fossil fuels in the space of a few hundred years that which took a few hundred million years to lay down
• we are changing the surface of the planet through mining and building roads, cities, cutting down trees, polluting rivers and oceans etc etc.

These habits will make planet earth a far less pleasant place for human survival.

Climate models are hugely complex with multiple feedback loops which are very sensitive to embedded assumptions - eg: the interaction between the natural carbon cycle which generates about 95% of CO2 vs human activity 5%.

I think "the science" knows this better than anybody!

Weather (rain, wind, cloud cover etc) is driven by heat all of which increase due to greenhouse gases. Increased precipitation is apparently not falling as snow and thus glaciers retreat, increased cloud cover is not reflecting more sunlight, desertification is increasing despite more rainfall. Some of this is counter-intuitive (but not necessarily wrong).

Desertification is increasing due to decreasing rainfall - or intermittent rainfall with desertification followed by flash floods and rapid run off

Output is unremittingly negative with no attention to positive aspects of climate change - eg: northern Canada and Russia become more fertile, fish can swim to populate new breeding grounds as oceans warm, more rainfall may be welcome in many places, agricultural practice and crops can evolve to suit changed growing conditions etc etc.

The balance of impacts may still be negative - but more balanced reporting and analysis may encourage greater acceptance of changes needed. Consistently skewed output promotes denial, not rational debate.

I don't think there is skewed output. There is even a reluctance to look at worst case scenarios. You may not like what you are hearing but that doesn't mean it's skewed. Scepticism and reluctance to look at the facts have slowed the popular debate down and severely delayed action.
Positive changes sound good - but as change progresses already there are negative change elsewhere. More to the point - there's no knowing where change may stop - it may be brilliant for migratory fish but disastrous for us.
We need to listen to the science and not second guess.

 

[D_W]

We are lucky in that our tap water is potable. I know a lot of people buy bottled, but it is no better in most cases, sometimes worse.

Same here - tap water is potable and heavily regulated/tested. The market has done a good job of convincing people that it's "more convenient" to have plastic bottled water and that the taste of tap water is somehow bad (given the dispensing points in most houses are behind charcoal filtration, that's nonsense).

But I guess my question in the plastics is whether or not the UK and continental europe do a better job actually recycling them. In the US, when people get upset about nonrecyclable plastic, my first two questions are:
* why do you accept goods that shouldn't be plastic in the first place, especially if they're to be discarded
* do you know if much of your recycled plastic is being recycled?

If the answer to the second bullet point is "1/7th is being recycled and the rest goes to the dump", there's a bigger problem than a portion of the plastics being nonrecyclable.

I just checked our stats in the US to make sure that was accurate. The EPA says 2018 - 35MM tons of plastics created, 27MM tons of plastics disposed of in landfills. Here's the bogus part of that number reading further 3mm tons of the 8 above were recycled. 5.6MM tons were considered "recycled" because they were "combusted with energy harvested from the combustion".

Abysmal.

(I looked up what happens in the UK - apparently the government likes to state that 55% of plastic is collected but "45% is still thrown in landfills" so collection needs to be improved.

10% of the plastics sold in the UK actually get recycled, and the unconsumed sorted plastics get burned or sent to another country to dispose of.

This is part of the farce. Claiming a "recycling rate" based on collection, doing nothing with the collection and then admonishing the people who throw plastic away as if there was a consumer for it. It shouldn't be used in the first place.

 

[D_W]

https://www.bpf.co.uk/sustainability/plastics_recycling.aspx
Pages like this (and the government sponsored recycling pages) do zero to inform you regarding how much of the sorted material is being recycled. Greenpeace says the actual rate for the UK is 10%.

I wonder how many people would cut back on plastic use if they knew most of it was getting burned, put in a landfill or sent to another country (where they'll pile it up or burn it).

Old cars come to mind to me. There's a creek here with an old car in the bottom of it. I fish the creek. The car is so old that it's rusted to pretty much the engine block and a couple of old tire fragments and a plastic wire harness. The rest of it oxidized and was reclaimed by nature (I'm guessing any glass bits broke and are buried in the silt or have been sanded smooth into harmless bits by now. )

What will happen with the car that I'm driving that's got 100s of pounds of plastics and plastic foam in it? It won't be reclaimed so quickly.

 

[Jacob]

One answer to the plastic problem is to use it to fill old mines/quarries and "sequester" the carbon. Start laying up for a new "carboniferous" era.
Not a popular idea as it's too low tech!

 

[D_W]

Plus, you're burying garbage.

I'm more than willing to pay an extra penny for a blank if there is a requirement that 90% of all recyclable material must be used.

the idea that 10% is recycled (and probably some percentage of that in the US is incinerated at a generation plant and considered "recycled" by doing that) is farce.

It shouldn't be used and most people have no clue that their diligent recycling is likely wasting more in truck/energy costs for a second collection truck (none of this even accounts for making separate streams, handling them, etc, when they're all low density but the equipment handling them is heavy and consumes a lot of energy).

We had a neighborhood picnic on halloween - there was no recycling bin at the park, and everyone threw their garbage in the cans. My mrs. volunteers for everything, so we were cleaning up. One of the neighborhood folks who has "climate now!!" signs all over their yard was picking all of the plastic bottles out of the trash. I said to her "I wouldn't bother with the plastics, just pull the aluminum - the plastic is going to the dump, anyway - there's no consumer for the recycled plastic beyond the first seventh that we discard".

I don't think she believed me.

It's always been viable to collect aluminum - people collected and turned in the cans here long before there were formal recycling programs. I remember as a kid, dropping off our cans for the year at the metals center down the road, along with the odd house part here or there that had been replaced (like screen door frames, etc).

 

[Jacob]

Plus, you're burying garbage.
.......

Burying high carbon garbage in a way which does not allow it to decay, is sequestering carbon. Would also have to be replacing plastic with sustainable alternatives, but this was never a problem in the past. Modern plastic products were virtually unknown when I was a kid.