Climate Change

Well as far as I can understand, Mark is involved in an argument about the potential for renewable energy by 2050. Have I got this wrong? Bit weary after long walk.
And the sunspots issue - well some people have been predicting an increase rather than a decrease. I don't know enough about this branch of science to make a judgement who is right.

A couple of really interesting sites if anyone is interested are

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-climate-sulphur-idUSTRE7634IQ20110704

http://ecoswitch.com/the-global-warming-and-climate-change-controversy/

The first is about the cooling affects of industrial pollution in India and China.
The second is a general explanation of climate change affects and is very clear and concice.

If you are looking at this thread you must be interested in climate change - not knitting! I have been accused on another thread of posting a lot of stuff from the net. Please note that this is not the case. This is I think probably the first time (but I can't actually remember).

JessM Just been looking back and notice that you accuse me of joining gransnet to promote a single cause. Would this be so bad? Is it against the rules? I think a climate change thread on gransnet is an appropriate place to try to challenge people out of their collective complacency about the future of this planet. Do we, or do we not, as grandparents, have a responsibility? I am sad that you keep criticising me because I gather from your comments that you agree with me about most of the problems - shouldn't we stick together on this?

Off on holiday for a week. I'll be back.....

Have a good holiday carbon.

I did!
Now got a lot to do before gransnetting.

Welcome back carbon!!

Been very busy and away a lot but can't resist finding time to post this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQlHaGhYoF0&feature=share

Its short & sweet and (I think) very funny considering the weather!!!!!

In my area there are lots of places up for sale or rent, so why build more? What is affordable housing? Who can afford affordable housing? Is a studio apartment suitable for long term living? How important is it to have some green space of one's own? Why is purchasing property better than renting - the UK is unusual in this? Is it right to leave university with debt and then enter into a mortgage agreement in this economic climate? Can our country's infrastructure cope with the demands of more housing? What are the affects on us if we lose more of our countryside through building eg the effect of trees, flood plains? My mind is buzzing and my thoughts are rather garbled [it's getting late] but there are so many questions, and very few answers. To me it's another knee jerk reaction of the government - what happened to the Big Society? Or perhaps this is what 'Big' actually means!!!!

I don't understand that you tube video.

I just don't get it.

It is a bit funny. I think.

Goodness Goldengirl are we back on task?
Are you refering to the government's latest crazy ideas about relaxing planning so that buildings of all sorts can pepper the greenbelt? Not sure what you are getting at though: houses for sale or rent do not count if you are trying to understand housing needs unless they are actually empty. People moving or not being able to move because of prices does not necessarily indicate a surplus of housing.
A lot more people live on their own these days but this does not account for all the housing needs (and other needs!) - one must not forget the important part of the equation: more people need more house! Our population cannot keep increasing without affecting how we live. Examine any of the problems we face and sooner or later one comes across the problem of overpopulation. There would not be a climate change problem if there were not so many of us

Yes there would. Climate changed before there were people on the planet and it will carry on changing after we're gone.

Baggy and carbon, sounds like Groundhog Day.....

I like the idea of Zero population!!!

Well I guess they day will come Faye. It would be sad if, when it does, we have completely trashed the planet and all the other animals and plants, but it looks like trash it we will, by pollution, agricultural practices, destruction of ecosystems etc We've been working at it ever since we discovered fire and the process is speeding up. (global warming or no global warming)

Sorry Baggy I meant man-made climate change (as you well know!)

Not everyone believes in it, carbon. Ordinary people are fed up with all the failed prophecies of doom. Yet another prominent scientist has just resigned from the American Physical Society to protest the organisation’s stance on global warming. The science is far from settled.

Baggy not everyone believes in climate change but lots of us do. If those of us who believe are wrong there will be no harm done, and we will live on a cleaner planet. If those who don't believe are wrong, we face a disaster!

I don't believe we have a lot of time to do something and am concerned when people deny climate change exists. What would you say to islanders who are most severely threatened by rising sea levels.

'For the first time since civilization began, sea level has begun to rise at a measurable rate. It has become an indicator to watch, a trend that could force a human migration of almost unimaginable dimensions. It also raises questions about responsibility to other nations and to future generations that humanity has never before faced.'
www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2001/update2

Disappearing Islands:
www.globalislands.net/news/newsdeskitem.php?newstype=Special&newsid=4660&mfxsr=8

And killer crabs invading Antarctica due to warming water.
Excellent point Faye. Even if man made warming a complete myth then using up all the fossil fuels and not putting anything in to replace them not good for grandchildren.

I expect that our grandchildren will not have the same quality of life as we have NOW but perhaps more like that we had when -some of us- were young that is one fireplace and being cold and wearing more clothes.
We started off poor and cold and eating potatoes and they will have to go back to it I suppose. This doesn't upset me too much as we had terrible scares and danger and survived and they will grow into what ever way of life there is. They will have no choice.
As to affordable housing. That must be flats and not a house and backyard and a bit of garden for everyone. Flats are easier to keep warm and energy usage can be better controlled and refined.50% of people on the continent live in flats. The sore point in the UK is that no one wants or is willing to accept rules for communal living.
Flat dwellers in Germany have to take turns in clearing snow, washing down the communal staircase and in bigger places paying a monthly sum for the cleaning of staircases and lifts, and eventual repairs, even long term for the repair of roof tiles etc etc.
There are rules about noise pollution -no washing machines after 10 p.m. and noise levels are to be kept down at all times. Now there are all the recycling bins. It sounds terrible all these rules but it doesn't work without and these rules have grown over a century of communal living.

I find it pleasant when visiting friends that the lifts are clean and well kept and that you can enjoy the view from a high balcony without loud music from next door.
The most acceptable flats are what we call 3 family houses which are a family on each floor. These are not too high, you know your neighbours and most people are well satisfied with them. I used to live in a 2 family house on the first floor with a large balcony. I brought up two children there and now, when my grandchildren come to my house, I am permenantly running up and down stairs and am glad I had my two all on one level when they were young.

I'd say it is like insurance - we look after the earth in such a way as to fend off the worst scenario, and if it does not happen we are none the wiser, but still surviving. Or we can believe the best scenario is going to happen, not insure, and find out too late that we were wrong.

Remember the year 2000 computer date crisis (or potential crisis) ? Early computer programmes, when computers had far less memory and working space, used a shortened form of the date year - 80 for 1980 - because the full date would have taken up 100 times the memory, every time it was used, and the software referred to the date very frequently, as a check on whether things were still synchronised OK.

Come the change from 1999 to 2000, a lot of software still in use was in danger of falling over when it thought that errors were creeping in. Disaster for hospital equipment, traffic lights, banks, defence systems, public utilities.

So responsible IT users manually checked every single line of code in their programmes, corrected dates, and made all safe. DH was employed by a major energy supplier to head up a team of 4 for eighteen months doing just that - making absolutely sure that the nation's power did not suddenly switch off at a second past midnight.

On the first of January 2000, 99% of the nation appeared to be saying that all the hype was a con, there had been no disasters, money had been wasted etc etc and we could have ignored the possible threat.

Duhh !!

I thought we were in the process of researching and testing alternatives to fossil fuels so I don't quite understand your point, jess.

faye, and anyone else who cares to read this and absorb it (sorry for the dig; I have said it before but it doesn't seem to go in), I don't know anyone who denies climate change, only people who are not convinced on current unadulterated evidence, that it's our fault that climate changes. If you look at the big picture and not just the last half century, and if you look at both sides of the picture, as I do, it's hard to be convinced that the anthropogenic 'signal' is other than fairly insignificant on a planet where numerous things cause various and continuous changes in both weather and climate (which are not the same thing).

Besides which, in spite of increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, average global temperatures have stayed level for the last decade. That alone defeats the AGW hypothesis and, as Einstein said, it only takes one refutation to disprove a hypothesis.

Meanwhile the biosphere is thriving because of the extra plant food (CO2) in the atmosphere. Sounds good to me, especially where growing food for us and other animals is concerned. How many of you are aware that farmers who grow crops in greenhouses/poly tunnels pump extra CO2 in to help the plants grow? How many people remember how many useful "side products" of oil there are? Anyone wearing any synthetic fibres today? Polythene for the tunnels comes from oil too, and all the plastic we all use every day. Clean coal technology is doing well, and so on and so on.

I guess I'm just a positive and optimistic person who thinks that past evidence of human adaptability is a good sign that we'll adapt in the future as well. The thing that saddens me is that in spite of being a mere pinprick on the "life cycle" of this planet, we think we're so important.

Peter Taylor's scientific review of the breaking science in the fields of clouds, oceanography, geophysics, solar magnetic cycles, in his book Chill, puts back into perspective our place in the indifferent universe as insignificant self-glorifying apes, addicted to doom and gloom predictions, who still haven't got out of the rather primitive habit of thinking they are big cogs. The science he reviews is fascinating.

The "corporate creep" he speaks of, the idiocy of the Global Development Model in not only allowing but encouraging ecological madness, the naive collusion of scientific institutions and of environmental groups in the dissemination of misinformation is monumentally scary. Taylor says on pp291-2 what I have been feeling in my guts for some time but unable to articulate:

The organizations that should be my natural allies now show all the signs of corporate creep, collusion and denial. They are not willing to look at the way their internal organization has changed, their embrace of the corporate ethos and how this affects their goals and policies, or their collusion with government and alliance with other corporate entities, or their assessment of climate science. Moreover, they are adopting the same irrational response to criticism that has marked government and corporations throughout the decades of environmental campaigning.

Consider, as an example of corporate creep, charity mugging, now so common.

Consider the nuttiness of Norwegian farmed salmon. Its itinerary from farms in Norway to processing plants in China and back to Britain for sale is considered in today's completely bonkers politico-social climate to be economic. It may be economical in monetary terms but it is just as assuredly unsound by almost any other terms of reference.

Like Peter Taylor, I care about the environment. I do not deny climate change but I think adapting to it will get us further than other behaviour, as it has with other problems we, as a species, have faced.

I know you are concerned about the environment baggy but you seem to be on a mission to preach climate change denial. But don't you think Faye's point about erring on the side of caution is valid?
I'm not sure we can just assume that grandchildren's lives will be a bit like the 1950s or 1960s.
They could be putting up with astonishingly high fuel bills (paying Russia for gas...) and power cuts combined with either hotter or colder weather. Those living in hotter parts of the globe could be finding that they were no longer habitable due to lack of rainfall. Those living in countries like Bangladesh could find they don't have a country left.
(Poor Pakistan is having even worse floods this year than last with the heaviest monsoon for 100 yrs).
Those useful products that we all throw away, made from petrochemicals, will not longer be available.
Increasing plunder of rainforest timber, even if it does not affect global warming, is a huge tragedy, whether or not plants like more CO2.
So say you are right, Baggy, and none of these things come to pass. Should we carry on consuming, wasting and despoiling in a jolly free-for-all that carries on until the petrochemicals run out?
We are testing or promoting alternative energy sources but not in any concerted and determined manner. The last government dragged its feet as well. Unfortunately we will have to resort to nuclear, or the lights are going to go out. If we can find companies that will take the job on.

With advance apologies for being a bit flippant about a serious issue......

There was a programme on TV last night about dinosaurs, with computer generated beasts and lots of details about where remains were found and the scientific basis of conclusions reached about how and where they lived etc.

One massive beast was Spinosauraus, bigger than T Rex. It fed solely on fish and amphibians from the lakes and rivers of the part of Africa (I think) that it inhabited. The graphics then showed how all the lakes and rivers disappeared under a bigger area of blue and joined with the sea. The narrator explained that climate change led to a massive increase in the levels of the oceans, and this resulted in Spinosaurus becoming extinct as its food source disappeared.

My immediate thought was....'Those damn pre-historic fridges'

<hides under the table>

Baggy, I hope Peter Taylor is right and we are just small cogs and insignificant self-glorifying apes. This is actually a primitive culture or maybe a more enlightened culture think of what we are doing to the Earth:

^'The Kogi are an indigenous people living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of northern Colombia, in South America. The Sierra Nevada is the highest coastal mountain in the world only 26 miles from the beach. It is located near the Equator, which means it has no seasons. Day and night are of equal length all year round. It has every eco-system in its 17,000 km2 area (8,000 sq. miles) You can find coral reefs, mangroves, arid deserts, rain and cloud forest, and in the higher elevations, plains and snow-capped peaks with temperatures close to –20 degrees.'

The Kogi, call themselves the Elder Brothers of the human race and us the Younger Brothers. They say we are destroying the balance of life on earth.
The Kogi believe their mountain is the heart of the world. 'The snows had stopped falling and the rivers were not so full. If their mountain was ill then the whole world was in trouble.'^

'Their warning and message to the 'Younger Brother.' We are the "Younger Brother" who are destroying the Earth and causing an ecological imbalance that may affect future generations to come.'

tierra-y-vida.blogspot.com/2006/09/kogi-elder-brothers-warning.html

In 2000 my niece lived with a Kogi tribe for two months. The Kogis said the Younger Brother were stealing their clouds.
www.theelderbrother.com/index.cfm