I agree with Jeremy Clarkson - climate change is rather boring

[ABetaDad]

I have never met Jeremy Clarkson but I feel a kinship to him. We were born within a few miles of each other, we both lived in the Cotswolds, we wear jeans are middle aged blokes and even tried to buy the same house once. I also agree with him in this article that the evidence for climate change is rather slim and it is "all rather boring".

As for the young women dumping manure on his drive ... well you tell me he is wrong in his opinion of them and on climate change.

Now before you all go foaming at the mouth. I have not driven a car in 20 years, took one flight this year and work from home. I just think the waffle about climate change is nonsense - very few people or indeed any Govt have the slightest intent in doing anything about it in their personal lives and are raher bored with the whole thing.

[said]

I think the evidence that climate change is man-made or exacerbated by man is up for debate but I don't think the evidence for climate change itself is slim.

I don't feel any kinship with Jeremy Clarkson.

[madlentileater]

all the evidence is in and the consensus is that it is man made.
enjoy being bored while you can, things are going to change, the only question is how much.

[TheCrackFox]

I don't even drive but watch Top Gear. I find him funny and a tosser all at the same time. Very confusing.

FWIW I think stunts like manure on his drive (albeit good for the roses) are very immature.

[ABetaDad]

Wo among MN readers is actually doing something about climate change though?

Don't we all have far more pressing issues to deal with that are gong to affect all our families much more?

Is this not just a great big excuse for Govt to interfere with our lives and a load of wasted subsisdy to be ladeled out?

[madlentileater]

ABD, if you are flying and driving that little you are already doing more than most, even if it bores you.
Lots of people are doing stuff (look at the 10:10 campaign) it really does affect our families, assuming we are expecting our dcs to live more than 20yrs.
Govt has to get involved because only govt has the power to make certain things happen, eg for public transport to become a viable alternative.

[GentleOtter]

I'm with you on the entire climate change debate, ABetaDad.
There appear to be conflicting reports as to whether it is a cyclic phenomena possible exacerbated by the pollutants produced today eg thousands of flights, coal energy stations in China etc.

I feel this government almost fell over with glee in their haste to use climate change to tax us further and, even worse, use our areas of unspoiled land in order to turn them in to wind farms.

I fail to see the wisdom in replacing lightbulbs with those half-baked ones that are dim and contain mercury just so we can save the planet or a polar bear....when gazillions of tons of carbon dioxide pollute the atmosphere world wide.

[scaryteacher]

I agree ABD - it all seems a load of scaremongering to me. If it WAS that serious, then surely Govts worldwide and in concert would legislate for change, and not tinker at the edges.

Have to admit to being more worried about terrorism than climate change.

[ABetaDad]

madlentil - thats the thng. As a family, we do emit a lot less CO2 than most families as an accidental result of our chosen lifestyle but frankly I really do not feel at all inclined to tell other people to emit less. I think we could all drive and fly less but most people are grafted at birth to cars and will never give them up or long distance flights for holidays. Me and DW used to fly long distance flights every few months and most years went several times round the world and fully intend to do it again as soon as DSs get bigger. Nobody cares that I know - well not by looking at their actions anyway.

Gentle as far as I am concerned wind turbines are one gigantic con trick to extract more tax and subsidy. Combined cycle gas turbine power stations are extremely efficient, emit far less coal CO2 than coal fired power stations, can be built with no subsidy. Gas is ubiquitous and extremely cheap now (the price crashed in the last 6 months) so I just cannot see anyone building wind turbines now without yet more massive subsidies paid by tax payers.

Wind turbines are not even reliable producers of power in winter when we often have cold very still days with no wind!

[Miggsie]

Climate change is very boring...right up to the point where here isn't enough water or food to sustain the number of humans on the planet and we end up in wars for them.

Then it will be far more interesting, although possibly scary.

And as none of us live in Bangladesh we can find it dull as it won't be our homes flooding and 60% of the land mass we live on disappearing, it will be theirs, our turn will come much later, but we are not immune.

It's one planet...but the poor nations will suffer first so lets all be supercillious and ignore it all.

[JodieO]

I agree and I've thought the same thing for years. We don't know whether it's just the natural path the planet is taking or not. Personally, I think that it's part of nature and that they are using, so called, climate change for their own benefits. There were plenty of major events happening on earth long before we showed up.

Even if human beings were playing a part in environmental changes then you could argue that it's still natural as we're a part of this planet and we've adapted it to accommodate the way we live our lives. That's not to say that it all wouldn't have happened regardless due to some other reason. There is a hell of a lot that we still don't know about our climate and the way it's changing.

[FuriousGeorge]

I have to agree too.The climate is continually changing and always has.I'm fed up with being banged over the head with it on every tv & radio programme [cbeebies and the Archers,I'm looking in your direction].

My cousin's dp has a test mast for a wind farm on his land and he freely admits he is doing it purely for the money and that they only operate in the 'right sort of wind' and use as much energy as they supposedly save.

[madlentileater]

David Stern, who was govt chief scientist at the time, said that climate change was a greater threat to the world than terrorism. Also that unless we invest some money in mitigating against the effects now, it will be far, far more costly if we leave it till later to try and do something about it. Of course governments around the world have been criminally slow to act, that's because the most obvious effects are happening to people in the poorer and less powerful countries, and the leader of the free world was until recently in thrall to the oil industry.
Not that it's not having an effect here, the heatwave in Europe a few years ago caused thousands of deaths.

[atlantis]

I wouldn't say it's boring I do like to see scientist bickering amoungst themselves as to whether (as core samples show) the planet will continue to warm and then cool, throw up tsunami's, erupt a few volcano's (cough, cough, splutter, splutter) shake the ground here and there and then in a few thousand years throw us back into an ice age.

When china, india, pakistan et al stop spilling out their levels of co2, when the government ministers stop taking private planes and jolly jaunts for things they could video conference about, when the environment minister starts to recycle, then I might think about getting a 'lesser' car, or worrying if a 2 centremeter piece of cardboard entered my black bin.

As for the feeding the world, the world is over crowded by at least a half, so who's for the chop then?

[wickerman]

Are you lot for real?
There is no more doubt about whether climate change is exacerbated by manmade activity.

Occasionally someone tries to make out that there are other explanations - and YEAH of course the earth goes through cycles. But yep, climate change - from Co2 emissions - is caused by manmade activity.

Nobody really actually doubts this any more.
You're kind of being flatearthers, you know.

Jeremy Clarkson, for example, is a total twat. OH and his livelihood, as a professional twat, is dependent on fossil fuels. Go figure.

I think war is boring, famine is boring, third world people not having fun is boring......REALLY? Because climate change is already, massively affecting the third world, in huge, cataclysmic ways. How boring.

[atlantis]

Couldn't agree more with your DH Waswondering. We should have been going back into a sun maximus some two years ago and that didn't happen, also the change of magnetic pole and the fact that the planets are coming into alignment means were going to experience a lot of freeky weather, being this side of the solar system sure is fun.

As for climate change affecting the third world Wickerman, gosh, that's never happened before? I wonder why as a species we all decided to leave Africa and span out to colder climates?

I for one am looking forwrd to growing grapes in my garden (so much cheaper than supermarket grapes ) the way the romans did when they rules England.

[pointyhat]

If you and Jeremy Clarkson think it is boring, I don't really understand why you would want to spend time discussing it further.

[mayorquimby]

"Are you lot for real?
There is no more doubt about whether climate change is exacerbated by manmade activity."

well seeing as no scientist has conclusiveky proven that climate change is man made i'd say there is still doubt.

[SomeGuy]

I just read that apparently the world's data centres (computer servers) produce more CO2 than the entire global air travel industry.

Air passenger duty is going up to £85 soon, double in business class.

[Cortina]

From someone much better informed than me:

The big issue is not really whether the earth is warming or cooling, or if the climate is changing. All those things are happening now, just as they have happened in the past, and will continue happen in the future. Whether the temperature trend shows warming or cooling is entirely dependent on the time period we look at, ie: years, decades, centuries, Milena, millions or billions of years.

The BIG ISSUE is that some people say and many believe that it is mankind's activities that generate CO2, that are the cause of warming and climate change, AND that these activities must be stopped.

Despite $50B spent over the last 20 years, there is no scientific evidence that links CO2 to warming, but there is substantial evidence that proves that CO2 increases happen after warming periods (about 800 years later). Another fact is that mankind's contribution to CO2 is only about 3.8% of the total increase with the rest coming from the oceans, geological activity and decaying plant/animal matter. It is a fact that CO2 is not a pollutant, but a critical component for life on earth and in fact food for nearly all plants, which is why for a 100+ years farmers have pumped their greenhouses up with CO2 to increase the size and rate of crop growth.

The day will come for the Man-made Global Warming fear-mongers - should they actually plunge the world in to economic decay in an baseless attempt try to take us back to "year zero" to fix a problem that does not exist.

These idiots would have as much chance of stopping global warming as they do stopping the the wind from blowing.

What has been happening to temperatures over the last century?

1900s-1940s - temperatures increased substantially.

1940s-1970s - temperatures decreased substantially.

1970s-2000 - temperatures increased substantially.

2000-now - temperatures have decreased substantially. (now at levels of the late '70s)

For the last 150 years since the end of the "little ice-age" the level of atmospheric CO2 has been on a very steady and constant increase. But there is no correlation with temperatures levels of that period. However increasing and decreasing temperatures strongly correlate with our sun's sun-spot activities.

These are the facts.

[Callisto]

To me the whole thing has less to do with climate change and far more to do with how we treat the planet and each other. There are finite resources on the planet and far, far too many people. However you feel about pollution etc, it isn't good for the planet so, fairly obviously, it isn't good for us either. Intensive farming is incredibly destructive, pesticide and fertiliser run-off affects local ecosystems very negatively. Apex predators in the sea (tuna, dolphins, sharks) are have very high levels of mercury which is a sign of just how much pollution there is in the oceans. There is such a huge amount of plastic in the oceans that the North Pacific gyre alone has around 150 million tons of plastic floating around - an area the size of Texas. As this breaks down (whilst killing all sorts of sea creatures who eat it and then can't digest it) it further pollutes the oceans.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure you would all find it terribly boring. No matter whether we are causing climate change or not, we as a species are destroying our planet. I find it very sad that so few are prepared to change their lifestyles to try and prevent this.

[KayHarkerIsKayHarker]

It's how it's framed.

"The world is going to be inhospitable in a few generation's time" isn't nearly as compelling as "You could save an enormous amount of money by turning the thermostat down".

[Restrainedrabbit]

I'm a lecturer (university) and researcher specialising in climate change, but I'm too bored to bother to explain and signpost all the scientific research proving that climate change is man-made...

[Cortina]

To restrainedrabbit (great name by the way)

Honestly interested in your response to an earlier post I made. Not by me but by someone in a similar field:

The big issue is not really whether the earth is warming or cooling, or if the climate is changing. All those things are happening now, just as they have happened in the past, and will continue happen in the future. Whether the temperature trend shows warming or cooling is entirely dependent on the time period we look at, ie: years, decades, centuries, Milena, millions or billions of years.

The BIG ISSUE is that some people say and many believe that it is mankind's activities that generate CO2, that are the cause of warming and climate change, AND that these activities must be stopped.

Despite $50B spent over the last 20 years, there is no scientific evidence that links CO2 to warming, but there is substantial evidence that proves that CO2 increases happen after warming periods (about 800 years later). Another fact is that mankind's contribution to CO2 is only about 3.8% of the total increase with the rest coming from the oceans, geological activity and decaying plant/animal matter. It is a fact that CO2 is not a pollutant, but a critical component for life on earth and in fact food for nearly all plants, which is why for a 100+ years farmers have pumped their greenhouses up with CO2 to increase the size and rate of crop growth.

The day will come for the Man-made Global Warming fear-mongers - should they actually plunge the world in to economic decay in an baseless attempt try to take us back to "year zero" to fix a problem that does not exist.

These idiots would have as much chance of stopping global warming as they do stopping the the wind from blowing.

What has been happening to temperatures over the last century?

1900s-1940s - temperatures increased substantially.

1940s-1970s - temperatures decreased substantially.

1970s-2000 - temperatures increased substantially.

2000-now - temperatures have decreased substantially. (now at levels of the late '70s)

For the last 150 years since the end of the "little ice-age" the level of atmospheric CO2 has been on a very steady and constant increase. But there is no correlation with temperatures levels of that period. However increasing and decreasing temperatures strongly correlate with our sun's sun-spot activities.

These are the facts.