Meanwhile the earth is burning

It's not only governments. Individuals need to change their behaviour to reduce their carbon footprint. I know those who take four or five holidays abroad each year
. Others who have several gas guzzling cars on their driveway.
We should only take from our planet what we need not what we want.

I think about this a lot. Americans seem to have no idea that big gas guzzling trucks, which they justify as cars need to travel greater distances, are damaging to the climate. Likewise they use aircon and tumble dryers habitually too. They either don’t care about their children’s future or are stupid (it’s just nature, we can’t stop it, it’s not true it’s a conspiracy). I wish people would get their heads out of their backsides and start to do their bit.

Sawsage2

It's nature, the world changes all the time. Nothing new.

🤦‍♀️

I dread the future for my GCs, even more so for for my own AC who will be looking at the future for their children. Parents are only as happy as their least happy child😥

The Gulf Stream keeps our islands relatively warm and temperate.
If this system were to slow down or even cease because sea ice has melted as a result of global warming, this could in fact cause a drop in temperature in the British Isles, Iceland and North-West Europe.

Yes the Gulf Stream is a real concern. Rather than hit weather Britain could face freezing temperatures if Gulf Stream changes its direction.

My nephew who lives near Washington says their air quality is very poor at the moment because of the Canadian forest fires, which happen naturally each year but are becoming more severe.

In my experience, telling people that they don't know what they're talking about, or that they're wrong, just creates more defensive responses.

However, I'm with Siope on this topic: utter despair at the number of people who are unable to face facts; and who, seemingly, have no interest in finding out what's actually happening to THEIR world/environment.

We simply cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand if we want an environment that is safe (or exists) for our descendants

I am more than happy to do my bit to assist with climate change but compared to India and China, we are a mere blip. That is what I find depressing.

The following is from Sir Dieter Helm's book ^'Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change'^:

"What can we really do about the climate emergency?

The inconvenient truth is that we are causing the climate crisis with our carbon intensive lifestyles and that fixing – or even just slowing – it will affect all of us. But it can be done.

In Net Zero, economist Dieter Helm addresses the action we all need to take to tackle the climate emergency: personal, local, national and global. Reducing our own carbon consumption is the first step. Helm argues that we, the ultimate polluters, should pay based on how much carbon the products we buy produce. We need a carbon price, and one that applies to everything and everywhere, from flights, to food and farming.
The goal of net zero carbon emissions needs a rethink and this book sets out how to do it in a plan that could and would work. Do this and we make no further contribution to global warming, in a way that embraces sustainable economic growth and does not harm other aspects of the environment in the process. There is a solution and we must find it. Everything is at stake."

Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Economics at New College Oxford

orly please will you let me know where you got the info about dust etc from? I haven't heard about this before. Many thanks

Even if people do not accept climate change as a real and present danger, we can at least see the damage too much waste and emissions have on the health of ourselves and other species

So we can just do what we can anyway and that's enough

My US-based son told me something extraordinary last week that makes me despair that anything will ever be done to protect the planet.

The cinema he recently visited had the usual air conditioning system but also, all the seats were fitted with heating so people could then adjust their own ‘mini-climate’ to suit their warmth requirements.

I know that in itself is a small thing but if it’s indicative of the mindset, how will anything ever change?

I live in the States. I get around walking and using public transport as we can no longer drive. When we did we rode public transport to work and took the car out perhaps once or twice a week. Children biked or used public transport to get to lessons and practices, on their own when teens and accompanied by a parent when younger. Our cars lasted 10 to 15 years before replacement. In 55 years of marriage we owned 4 cars, all used. My husband and I are both from large cities and were not accustomed to driving everywhere. We chose to live in the inner city, close to work and everything else. We used the train whenever possible for holidays in the US. We recycled and composted from the 1970s and bought local food whenever possible. We still do all these things. However we do use Air Conditioning. Today it was 35C and the humidity was 65%. Nighttime temperatures are low enough in June that we can usually switch it off and open windows. July, August, and September will be a different story with highs in the upper 30s and lows in the low 30s or upper 20s. Unbearable particularly for 75 and 80 year olds.

If all the predictions of the doom merchants were facts, life on the planet will cease to exist, clearly that’s not going to happen Climates will change, they always have, it makes sense to reduce pollution and consume less resources, globally that is not happening. We saw a brief reduction in CO2 levels during Covid now it has shot up again, there is no reason to be optimistic that anything we do makes any difference.

Those who point the finger at China and India must realise we are enablers of their polluting activities- we import tons of plastic tat and cheap clothing from them which we chuck away and add to the destruction of the planet. We have to curb our consuming whether it’s inconvenient it not.

katie39 I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. Thank you for calming down tge scaremongering

I save water by not running it while brushing my teeth - every little helps

orly

Ironically one of the reasons given for the rise in sea temperature around our southern coasts is the fall in particulates being emitted from shipping in the Channel into the atmosphere along with a fall in dust from the Sahara - both of which reflect the sun's rays back towards space.

Do you have an explanation for the North Sea temperature rise as well?

TBH I thought it was more about stratification, so I’m interested in this “new” explanation.

biglouis

I believe that as the environment deteriorates the green and extreme activist parties will gain power and eventually sweep away todays crooked elite.

There will be a new elite who judge harshly those who have more than one child in a world which is globally overpopulated. Each individual will bear not only their own carbon footprint but those of the offspring they produce. Families will be castigated as consumers and producers of waste and will be charged extra taxes.

I suggest you read a book call "The Forcing". It's a novel written by a scientist and was recently our local book club read.

I think your proposition is illogical. Where society starts to collapse and counties are destroyed by floods, fire and war we will a) need the young and b) everyone over about 40 will probably be held to account by them. Theses over 40s will be "othered" harsherly. This will be in ways than those on here, who love "othering" so many groups because of who they are, have not even dreamed of.

Pascal30 I am interested in what you say about living our own lives 'in an ecological way'. Beyond recycling whatever I can, not using chemicals in the garden, eating little meat, saving energy and not buying lots of 'stuff' I don't really know how to begin doing what you say so I would be glad to listen to your advice.

I think our political system is incapable of dealing with climate change because politicians are focussed on the short term cycle of electoral successes or failure, mainly don't have a full understanding of science and risk having any longer term plans scuppered by the next lot of narcissists and psychopaths to gain power.

icanhandthemback India and China, unfortunately (and rightly, perhaps) now want to benefit from the wealth created from their own 'industrial revolution', just as GB did from the 1700s onwards. It is depressing.

Katie59:
"If all the predictions of the doom merchants were facts, life on the planet will cease to exist, clearly that’s not going to happen"

I don't think it is clear that life on the planet will continue. I think those who study and research climate change ie scientists, and presumably these are the people you refer to as 'doom merchants', see a time when life will cease. My son is one such researcher who has a PhD in atmospheric pollution and is based at a prestigious university.

I'm afraid, and I use that term in the true sense, that we are living through a time when 'every little helps' is basically peeing in the wind. We need *BIG *changes and, as others have said, this isn't politically expedient.

May I suggest reading David MacKay's research, which is as relevant today as when he published:

www.withouthotair.com/

It is available to download for free....or, of course, take no realistic and informed interest in the subject and die happy in ignorance.

Good post northern lass my son is also invested in climate change as he is an environmental scientist and I get much of my information from him. And as you say it is by no means certain that life will survive, in fact quite the reverse.

The big issue is that presumably before we get to that catastrophe - there will be massive human climate migration with all the attendant issues. We are already seeing it in the natural world.