Lots of hot air

[RobinBHM]

Lol

Media make headlines to sell their product.

that’s not the same as hysterical…..that’s a lazy argument.

 

[RobinBHM]

I see crazies and trolls are at it again. They must have gotten bored claiming noone is dying from covid and it's all a government conspiracy to keep the populace down.

Same names, same arguments, same drivel.

I expect next month there'll be another 'alternate science' topic de jour, maybe gravity or relativity or what day of the week it is.

Interestingly I see something like 75% of Covid conspiracies originate from just 12 people…..most of them linked to the far right. Almost certainly Trump,supporters

 

[Rorschach]

Ive never met anybody in my life “in fear” from media headlines.

Seriously? Never met someone made afraid by a media story/headline? I am honestly really quite shocked at that, I meet them all the time, family friends, even just people chatting in the supermarket. People this weekend genuinely worried about the Taliban, as if there is even the slightest chance that their simple lives are going to be affected by that.

 

[Rorschach]

Media make headlines to sell their product.

Oh well that's alright then, it's just to sell headlines, we shouldn't take them seriously.

 

[Jacob]

......

Global Warming was renamed.

Because "changing" includes places with regional cooling due to changing weather patterns, but the overall drift is for warming

The climate is changing, why is that bad? .......

Because for many places it is changing for the worst, particularly where already close to a limit in terms of temperature, sea level, etc etc

 

[Jacob]

Seriously? Never met someone made afraid by a media story/headline?.....

The most common fear generating story in the MSM is anti immigrant propaganda. Sun and Mail speak of little else. It tipped the brexit vote.

 

[TominDales]

TominDales said:
The cost of laying the pipes around the sports field will mean the scheme costs £400k

I would be intrigued to learn what the carbon saving will be for that scheme - that's an awfully big hole, dug by diesel powered machinery, I presume. And then you have the manufacturing of the system itself- a great deal of petrochemicals seem to go into making these modern heating systems. If the financial payback will take 400 years, I certainly hope the carbon saving will be astonishing, so you can offset some of the system costs by spending less on flood prevention or similar. Imagine if it takes 400 years of green electricity running the system to cover the carbon burned installing it - that would be embarrassing. Especially as the chances of getting "green" electricity aren't all that good

You raise a important point.
There is embedded CO2 in all these new schemes. The best way to compare like with like is a full lifecycle analysis (LCA) of the co2 from cradle to grave. Most 'green' or alterative energy systems have a bad CO2 beggining, a bad end, but a good period in the middle when they generate low carbon energy. In the early days of PV it was estiamated in the 1980s that it took 5 to 10 years to get a carbon payback but with modern cells its less than 1 yr. GS heat pumps take about 12 months to payback the embedded CO2. Accoring to the engineer, the pipes will last aproximatley 100 years undergrund, the pump will need replaing after about 20 to 25 years. Most LCA studies are based on 20 year lifetimes. As time goes by the diggers will be electric and the making of the system will be low carbon electric so its should drop to zero. This graphe from the survayer shows the differnt energy systems over time interstingly electic heat is prdicited to drop to zero over the timeframe as the grid goes neutral. I'm not that keen on biomass, although zero carbon, the biomass needs to be sutainably sourced and that is hard to audit. The other thing to be careful of is adulterated LCAs, early on less scrupulus suppliers - some oil majors in particular chose analysis that was favourble to their argument, more recently standards are being proposed to get a more uniform basis to LCAs but its still early days and a bit of a wild west/greenwash remains.

I don't agree that we are doomed or that we have to cancel our lifestyle to adapt.
I've worked in the chemical/pharma industry for 35 years and over that time new environmental information has appeared and responsible companies (and countries through environmental legislation) have had to adapt to it. ICI made (and its successor still makes) 1m tonnes of Chlorine per year in the UK, chlorine has its good and bad points from an environmental perspective. Chlorine in drinking water has saved millions of lives and enables safe potable water globally, however making chlorine released mercury into the river Mersey, and eventually this pollution was shown to be harmful (in Japan Minamata), ion-exchange systems had to be installed to reduce the mercy emissions and now the plants have been replaced with ones that don't emit mercury. Over the same period of time we phased out lead in petrol and various insecticides and herbicides as well as the removal of CFCs. as I've said in past posts the removal of CFCs was lead by conservative politicians based on good science. These changes can be done in a cost effective way if implemented early and allowing for innovation to drive the change. In ICI the phase out of CFCs lead to thousands of redundancies, so it was not pain free, but the company adapted and new jobs were created and people like me moved on into new fields etc. I therefore subscribe to a view that climate change needs to be addressed now, but can be done in a pragmatic and practical way provided politicians show leadership.

 

[TominDales]

‘leave you all to your end - is - nigh catastrophe cult’
Couldn’t agree more…Scientism is the new world religion, their devotees are the evangelical missionaries, priests and preachers of this high control movement. Where to doubt or question is to be labelled a heretic and condemned to eternal damnation.
My rather simplistic approach is to look at how pathetic these prophets of doom have been even during my lifetime. I can remember being scared as a child by the new ice age that was about to hit planet earth…wrong.

I agree with you in the sense that Its important to distinguish proper validated scientific evidence that has stood the test of scrutiny and time in making these decisions. Its unfortunate that we live in an age where a myriad of social media opinions cloud some important issues. But modern society and technology at global scale can do great harm if not understood and regulated. I've worked in the industry and we see responsible care as important to our reputation as well as to preserving the planet.

As I've mentioned elsewhere I've worked in the chemical/pharma industry for 35 years and we have had to take drastic decisions on promoting or phasing our technologies and chemicals over that time based on good evidence. That is very different from assuming its all doom. We had to phase out lead from petrol as it was demonstrably causing harm. Similarly CFCs had to be phased out, that cost my company thousands of jobs and resulted in many of us changing field or career path. Similarly the phase out of DDT and many pesticides and herbicides. Right back in the 1950s ICI closed and bulldozed its b-naphylamine plant (a very good fabric dye) within 2 years of operation, when it noticed how many employees were dying of bladder cancer. It had to do something similar with one its early b-blockers. It had to rip out all its chlorine cells and replace them to end mercury pollution in the Mersey.
I've mentioned this before, but the abolition of CFCs was lead by Mrs Thatcher and R Reagan, not politicians known for being socialist ideologues, but when presented with the evidence of harm and predictions of global crop failure, they acted on it. It cost me and my colleagues loss of immediate career prospects and thousands of redundancies. For the UK public, initially the cost of refrigerants went up by a few £s per fridge/car. But we adapted to the change as we must. I see the current challenge with global warming as a similar collective problem, only on a much bigger scale. There is sufficient evidence now to show the need to change, so we have to get on with it and figure out practical and fair ways to do it. It will cost me and my colleagues some loss of career prospects (although Iv'e only a few more years to go), but we have to accept it as a necessary part of living in an industrial/technological age. Even after climate change, data will emerge of yet more problems caused by our industrial society, so we will have to continue to adjust, its a normal responsible way of living.
We can point to societies that didn't adjust and destroyed their environment to the point where there societies dies out - Christmas island being one. Where I live, the North York moors were much more heavily populated in ancient times, until ancient man deforested it and it became uninhabitable and is now home to a national park and a few sheep.

 

[Rorschach]

The most common fear generating story in the MSM is anti immigrant propaganda. Sun and Mail speak of little else. It tipped the brexit vote.

Impossible according to Robin.

 

[Selwyn]

the good old “media is spreading fear” argument.

it’s a lazy argument, using emotive terms that can’t be measured.

using words like “fear” and “worried” conveniently ignore nuance.


your argument conveniently classes “concern” with “fear”

They are spreading fear though. If it bleeds it leads, we know that

 

[Selwyn]

I agree with you in the sense that Its important to distinguish proper validated scientific evidence that has stood the test of scrutiny and time in making these decisions. Its unfortunate that we live in an age where a myriad of social media opinions cloud some important issues. But modern society and technology at global scale can do great harm if not understood and regulated. I've worked in the industry and we see responsible care as important to our reputation as well as to preserving the planet.

As I've mentioned elsewhere I've worked in the chemical/pharma industry for 35 years and we have had to take drastic decisions on promoting or phasing our technologies and chemicals over that time based on good evidence. That is very different from assuming its all doom. We had to phase out lead from petrol as it was demonstrably causing harm. Similarly CFCs had to be phased out, that cost my company thousands of jobs and resulted in many of us changing field or career path. Similarly the phase out of DDT and many pesticides and herbicides. Right back in the 1950s ICI closed and bulldozed its b-naphylamine plant (a very good fabric dye) within 2 years of operation, when it noticed how many employees were dying of bladder cancer. It had to do something similar with one its early b-blockers. It had to rip out all its chlorine cells and replace them to end mercury pollution in the Mersey.
I've mentioned this before, but the abolition of CFCs was lead by Mrs Thatcher and R Reagan, not politicians known for being socialist ideologues, but when presented with the evidence of harm and predictions of global crop failure, they acted on it. It cost me and my colleagues loss of immediate career prospects and thousands of redundancies. For the UK public, initially the cost of refrigerants went up by a few £s per fridge/car. But we adapted to the change as we must. I see the current challenge with global warming as a similar collective problem, only on a much bigger scale. There is sufficient evidence now to show the need to change, so we have to get on with it and figure out practical and fair ways to do it. It will cost me and my colleagues some loss of career prospects (although Iv'e only a few more years to go), but we have to accept it as a necessary part of living in an industrial/technological age. Even after climate change, data will emerge of yet more problems caused by our industrial society, so we will have to continue to adjust, its a normal responsible way of living.
We can point to societies that didn't adjust and destroyed their environment to the point where there societies dies out - Christmas island being one. Where I live, the North York moors were much more heavily populated in ancient times, until ancient man deforested it and it became uninhabitable and is now home to a national park and a few sheep.

The North York moors didn't become uninhabitable. People just chose to move elsewhere for various reasons. Don't have this bucolic idea it was full of afforestation, with little villages of weavers and millers living peacefully before some nasty landlord chopped trees down

 

[Selwyn]

The most common fear generating story in the MSM is anti immigrant propaganda. Sun and Mail speak of little else. It tipped the brexit vote.

We have an immigration policy which we have voted in the current govt collectively to enforce. Now like the policy or not, that is fair enough but it does have a remit from the populace.

We also have a legal system of immigration and asylum which most people want to see enforced rather than people being exploited by channel gangs and people in the backs of fridge lorries.

 

[TominDales]

The North York moors didn't become uninhabitable. People just chose to move elsewhere for various reasons. Don't have this bucolic idea it was full of afforestation, with little villages of weavers and millers living peacefully before some nasty landlord chopped trees down

Its something many locals commented on when we first moved up here and rented a place in Swainby. In the bronze age it was quite densely populated compared to later periods- with over 3000 odd burial mounds identified, but since deforestation the environment now supports moss and heather is very attractive and good for sheep farming. It maybe that they chose to move elsewhere, but the local folklore is that they deforested and without the cover the land became weak.

Here is a wiki clip.
Bronze Age[edit]
Around 2000 BC, the early Bronze Age Beaker People inhabited the Moors. During a 1,400 year period, these people inhabited all areas of the Moors and finally destroyed much of the original forest. The climate was relatively warmer and drier at this time so it was possible to live on the high moors throughout the year. When a piece of land was exhausted of nutrients, these people moved on, leaving behind land that was incapable of supporting anything but a heathland vegetation. There are about 3,000 Bronze Age burial mounds on the moors.

I should add that we put an offer on a house in Chop Gate and one in Nether Silton but got outbid on both before finding a very happy house in Ripon where we have been for 15 years. The Moors a certainly popular, but probably driven more from retirees and tourism these days.

 

[hairy]

No fear in the MSM then. Check.



The current requirement for my life to not mean the death of "your" kids means I must buy an EV and have a heat pump.

OK

But then what?

For some people the world in their lifetime gets hotter. For some people it gets colder.

The Sahara is encroaching further south, pushing people towards the river Niger, less land, more hunger and tension. But because I drive a diesel?

When big dirty shockingly bad 4x4s were taxed out of being much of a choice in the UK what happened? Did they get recycled at huge cost and waste? No, sold to Africa. NIMBY.

Yesterday it rained, some people died. Today, it rained a bit less, some people died. If I drive an EV, no-one will die. All lovely.

If more Artic ice melts the currents in the Atlantic may shift and make Scotland have a climate like Spain. Alternatively, it may make it too cold to be inhabitable. Get the likes of Ferguson to model both and they will both be a certainty within 12 months unless we paint our houses blue.

It doesn't matter any more what the self important gathering in Glasgow comes out with, it's all scripted nonsense pushing an agenda to get your money.

 

[TRITON]

Ireland was once 80% woodland.
They chopped it all down and probably burnt most of it.

 

[Selwyn]

Ireland was once 80% woodland.
They chopped it all down and probably burnt most of it.

But that was a long time before we invented climate change

 

[Jacob]

Ireland was once 80% woodland.
They chopped it all down and probably burnt most of it.

Copy pasted from a site:

De-forestation
It is easy to assume that de-forestation is a result of excessive demand for timber but in fact the opposite is more often the case.
Forest is cleared by those who do not value it and this has been happening for thousands of years. The main agent of de-forestation is and always has been farming, not forestry.

The well-publicised activity of timber extractors in tropical areas, often reckless or illegal, is distinct from those who merely wish to clear woodland by cutting and burning. Given political and economic stability then an extractor will become a conserver - for the sake of continuous supplies.

Where timber is valued it is conserved and supplies only run down in difficult times, e.g. ship building during the Napoleonic Wars led to reduction in timber supplies in spite of long-term planning and conservation measures undertaken by the Navy in earlier years.
Forest management and conservation are long established practices - see 'The History of the Countryside' by Oliver Rackham.
William Cobbett, in 'Rural Rides', comments often on the extent and variety of woodland in England in the early 19th century. Demand for timber was very high at this time and the abundance of woodland was due largely to traditional conservation practices.
19th century visitors to Ireland comment on the absence of trees and the bare landscape. This was due to English exploitation of the Irish forests since even before the sudden demand caused by the Great Fire of London when much rebuilding was with Irish timber. English owners of Irish land were not interested to forestry except as a short term cash source. It was often sold cheaply and there was little local demand. In earlier centuries Ireland had been known for its ancient forests but sheep, cattle and corn were more profitable and the old forests were cover for not only wolves but also the dispossessed Irish.

Tis cause enough for grieving,
Our shelter felled around us...
What shall we do for timber?
The last of the woods is down...
There's no holly nor hazel nor ash there,
The pasture's rock and stone,
The crown of the forest has withered,
And the last of the game is gone.

'Lament for the Woodlands' (Anon) from 'Lords and Commons' (Cuala Press, Dublin 1938), Frank O'Connor

 

[Selwyn]

Copy pasted from a site:

De-forestation
It is easy to assume that de-forestation is a result of excessive demand for timber but in fact the opposite is more often the case.
Forest is cleared by those who do not value it and this has been happening for thousands of years. The main agent of de-forestation is and always has been farming, not forestry.

The well-publicised activity of timber extractors in tropical areas, often reckless or illegal, is distinct from those who merely wish to clear woodland by cutting and burning. Given political and economic stability then an extractor will become a conserver - for the sake of continuous supplies.

Where timber is valued it is conserved and supplies only run down in difficult times, e.g. ship building during the Napoleonic Wars led to reduction in timber supplies in spite of long-term planning and conservation measures undertaken by the Navy in earlier years.
Forest management and conservation are long established practices - see 'The History of the Countryside' by Oliver Rackham.
William Cobbett, in 'Rural Rides', comments often on the extent and variety of woodland in England in the early 19th century. Demand for timber was very high at this time and the abundance of woodland was due largely to traditional conservation practices.
19th century visitors to Ireland comment on the absence of trees and the bare landscape. This was due to English exploitation of the Irish forests since even before the sudden demand caused by the Great Fire of London when much rebuilding was with Irish timber. English owners of Irish land were not interested to forestry except as a short term cash source. It was often sold cheaply and there was little local demand. In earlier centuries Ireland had been known for its ancient forests but sheep, cattle and corn were more profitable and the old forests were cover for not only wolves but also the dispossessed Irish.

Tis cause enough for grieving,
Our shelter felled around us...
What shall we do for timber?
The last of the woods is down...
There's no holly nor hazel nor ash there,
The pasture's rock and stone,
The crown of the forest has withered,
And the last of the game is gone.

'Lament for the Woodlands' (Anon) from 'Lords and Commons' (Cuala Press, Dublin 1938), Frank O'Connor

I tell you what, try living without farming! Criticise it all you want. But if feeds you and a lot of others

 

[Rorschach]

I tell you what, try living without farming! Criticise it all you want. But if feeds you and a lot of others

We just need to import our food like we import our fuel, no carbon emissions, everyone wins.

 

[Jacob]

I tell you what, try living without farming! Criticise it all you want. But if feeds you and a lot of others

The problem is animal farming, which uses 20 times the land area of the equivalent vegetable food production.
S America is being rapidly deforested for cattle farming and animal fodder, following word-wide trends.