Lots of hot air

[Phil Pascoe]

a fox does

as does a badger.

 

[Rorschach]

as does a badger.

Wrong again. I assume you are both referring to surplus killing? If so, this is not the same as purposely overusing finite resources.

 

[Selwyn]

You mean all that stuff about fires in Greece and America and a lot of other places, and floods and droughts, are all gaslighting and the people there have nothing to worry about? Are they leaving their homes to soon, is it a mass panic and everything is OK really?
Maybe government agencies, or Jeremy Corbyn, are setting them off deliberately? Who is making money out of them, except emergency services on overtime?
https://www.space.com/2021-record-wildfire-season-from-spacehttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/todays-wildfires-are-taking-us-into-uncharted-territory/
PS there is some truth in the gaslighting notion - but the other way around. The main stream media have been extremely slow on reporting on this and generally sceptical. Even the BBC has until recently felt it should show a "balanced" picture and every comment on climate change was accompanied by counter comments from an ignorant sceptical fruit cake such as Nigel Lawson. By and large climate change has been under reported and derided by the media.

There are quite a few people - Patrick Moore, Mike Schellenberger, Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg etc who are all intelligent thinking people (not fruitcakes) who say the climate is changing but that it does not have to be view in such catastrophic terms.

 

[Rorschach]

There are quite a few people - Patrick Moore, Mike Schellenberger, Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg etc who are all intelligent thinking people (not fruitcakes) who say the climate is changing but that it does not have to be view in such catastrophic terms.

Not very exciting though is it? Doesn't give governments opportunities to make money for themselves and their mates and claim emergency powers either. Let's go with the catastrophe instead.

 

[Jacob]

There are quite a few people - Patrick Moore, Mike Schellenberger, Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg etc who are all intelligent thinking people (not fruitcakes) who say the climate is changing but that it does not have to be view in such catastrophic terms.

They are a very, very, tiny eccentric minority of the scientific community, if they know anything about climate science at all. Patrick Moore was an astronomer - brilliant in his own way but had no formal science education. I don't know about the others but I suspect they are fruitcakes.

 

[Rorschach]

They are a very, very, tiny eccentric minority of the scientific community, if they know anything about climate science at all. Patrick Moore was an astronomer - brilliant in his own way but had no formal science education. I don't know about the others but I suspect they are fruitcakes.

Wrong Patrick Moore, shows how much you really know

 

[Jacob]

Wrong Patrick Moore, shows how much you really know

Never heard of the other one. So he's a sceptic, so what?
According to Greenpeace, Moore is "a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry, the logging industry, and genetic engineering industry" who "exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson"
So if it is all exaggerated, do you believe the current global round of fires is nothing to worry about?
Don't sceptics change their minds when presented with evidence?
The climate change forecasts have been right so far but a bit over cautious; things happening sooner than forecast. Do you believe this is just a blip and everything will be back to normal sooner or later?

 

[AlanY]

I will believe there is a crisis when the rich are forced to stop using their yachts and private jets. Until then, this is all just a power grab by governments against the common man/woman and, as far as I am concerned they can go and screw themselves.
Also, to those who scream about container ships that burn 1 billion tonnes of fuel a second (or whatever it was), I say 'so what?'. The alternative to this would be that we manufacture those goods locally and, back when we did that, our air and rivers were poisoned by the factories and industrial processes. Now our air is good and our rivers are clean. All that sh*t is now in China.

 

[Jacob]

.....All that sh*t is now in China.

Except for the CO2 which will find its way all round the world and the water pollution which will find its way around half the world. It's not about local pollution any longer.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

You mean all that stuff about fires in Greece and America and a lot of other places, and floods and droughts, are all gaslighting and the people there have nothing to worry about? Are they leaving their homes to soon, is it a mass panic and everything is OK really?
Maybe government agencies, or Jeremy Corbyn, are setting them off deliberately? Who is making money out of them, except emergency services on overtime?

A few facts about the Greek fires, which I am somewhat qualified to talk about.
1. According to the BBC, the wildfires this year were, and I quote, "unprecedented ". The Greek prime minister also used the term "unorecedented". This is a lie. It's not even close to being true. In 2007 10% of the landmass of greece caught fire, in the space of 4 days. That was unprecedented. The reason for the fires is a simple: it has been a dry spring, and people set fire to the forest, sometimes by accident but mostly on purpose. This happens every year, but this year is more difficult because of the dry spring. I will leave you to find out what the total landmass percentage of fires has been so far, but it isnt even 1%, as far as I am aware. That may change, obviously.

Some man made fires:

https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/200335/briton-arrested-for-setting-fires/https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1165838/new-fires-break-out-in-fokida-east-mani/https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/232238/man-arrested-for-arson-in-ancient-olympia/
(Yesterday we had a few new fires caused by lightning, but up until then everything was man made, and not global warming).

2. Change of land use. Until recently most forests were managed resources with controlled fires to clear unburned fuel, and villagers would be using fuel for cooking, heating and even burning limestone to make quicklime. These things no longer happen, especially in the national parks. This means that the underbrush builds up, and then a small fire becomes a raging inferno. Apparently this is also true in the usa, among other countries. Bigger fires are due to more fuel caused mostly by changing use by humans, but I would be happy to acknowledge that more CO2 means more and faster tree growth.

3. Weather. This year, just like 2006/7 sees a Pacific El Niño event move immediately to a La Niña system. We are getting similar weather conditions to 2007. Interestingly, although everyone is claiming that this year is hotter/dryer/changier than it has ever been before, I remember 2007 as being both dryer over the winter and hotter during the summer. While I do have some records of rainfall, water table height and temperature, these are very local to me and mostly anecdotal.

4. Politics. A Greek cartoon:

In summary, fires happen. They have always happened, and they will always happen. Using them for alarmism and fear mongering doesn't really change much, except it frightens the frightenable.

One of the ancient historians (which one exactly I forget) reported fires in Greece that burned for years. Nothing new under the sun.

 

[Selwyn]

They are a very, very, tiny eccentric minority of the scientific community, if they know anything about climate science at all. Patrick Moore was an astronomer - brilliant in his own way but had no formal science education. I don't know about the others but I suspect they are fruitcakes.

Wrong Patrick Moore.

They are not eccentrics or fruitcakes. Matt Ridley and Bjorn Lomborg are very intelligent, independent thinkers.

You are of course entitled to disagree with them but it doesn't make them fruitcakes. They just see the bigger picture differently to you.

 

[Jacob]

A few facts about the Greek fires, which I am somewhat qualified to talk about.
1. According to the BBC, the wildfires this year were, and I quote, "unprecedented ". The Greek prime minister also used the term "unorecedented". This is a lie. It's not even close to being true. In 2007 10% of the landmass of greece caught fire, in the space of 4 days. That was unprecedented. The reason for the fires is a simple: it has been a dry spring, and people set fire to the forest, sometimes by accident but mostly on purpose. This happens every year, but this year is more difficult because of the dry spring. ..........

You've completely missed the point.
More "dry springs" as in 2007 and also this year, are a feature of climate change, whatever the actual incident which set off the fires.
This is what climate change is bringing about: "Hot temperatures, including three consecutive heat waves of over 40 °C (105 °F), and severe drought rendered the 2007 summer unprecedented in modern Greek history." 2007 Greek forest fires - Wikipedia

 

[Jacob]

Wrong Patrick Moore.

They are not eccentrics or fruitcakes. Matt Ridley and Bjorn Lomborg are very intelligent, independent thinkers.

You are of course entitled to disagree with them but it doesn't make them fruitcakes. They just see the bigger picture differently to you.

It's not my picture, it's the vast majority of the scientific community picture.

 

[Selwyn]

Never heard of the other one. So he's a sceptic, so what?
According to Greenpeace, Moore is "a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry, the logging industry, and genetic engineering industry" who "exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson"
So if it is all exaggerated, do you believe the current global round of fires is nothing to worry about?
Don't sceptics change their minds when presented with evidence?
The climate change forecasts have been right so far but a bit over cautious; things happening sooner than forecast. Do you believe this is just a blip and everything will be back to normal sooner or later?

Everywhere in the world there is a fire. You cannot exclusively say these fires are a result of climate change. There are loads of factors - value of land, proximity to population, forest management etc etc.

This May was very cold in the UK. End of July was very Hot. August is currently below average.

In France June was below average. Currently it is v hot in the med.

Things change all the time.

I think it is a good idea to increase electrification and reduce fossil fuel use but I don't think we need to catastrophise.

 

[Selwyn]

You've completely missed the point. More "dry springs" as in 2007 and also this year, are a feature of climate change, whatever the actual incident which set off the fires.

What about the wet June?

 

[Jacob]

What about the wet June?

You tell me. What do you think about the wet June?

 

[Jacob]

Everywhere in the world there is a fire. You cannot exclusively say these fires are a result of climate change. There are loads of factors - value of land, proximity to population, forest management etc etc.
.....

They are all compound incidents. Climate change isn't a separate thing and whatever the other circumstances surrounding a fire, or a drought, flood, whatever, climate change will change is changing the probability of it happening.
This crops up a lot e.g. people point to floods and say "not climate change it's low lying land already prone to flooding" but the effect of climate change will make it happen more often and to a greater degree, in places already vulnerable.

 

[Selwyn]

Not very exciting though is it? Doesn't give governments opportunities to make money for themselves and their mates and claim emergency powers either. Let's go with the catastrophe instead.

World economies need massive kickstarts to keep them functioning. Its often not about slow continued growth but big leaps forward from innovation eg the wheel, the printing press, the train, the car, the internet etc. Climate change is one way ensuring another "big leap forward"

 

[Selwyn]

You tell me. What do you think about the wet June?

Its called weather

 

[Selwyn]

They are all compound incidents. Climate change isn't a separate thing and whatever the other circumstances surrounding a fire, or a drought, flood, whatever, climate change will change is changing the probability of it happening.
This crops up a lot e.g. people point to floods and say "not climate change it's low lying land already prone to flooding" but the effect of climate change will make it happen more often and to a greater degree, in places already vulnerable.

It all depends on where the floodplain is, the value of the damage (hence it gets more reported), what is going on upstream and downstream, the drainage management etc.