Climate change

Global warming due changes in atmospheric CO2 was first predicted over 125 years ago.

Hello @Harpings can I ask you a question? And absolutely no disrespect intended here, just curiosity. I'm wondering how the overall message about climate change and the dangers we face has managed to come across as 'something we can adapt to'. As someone who has known for fifty years that we are behaving in a way that is in danger of making the planet uninhabitable, and, again, as someone who moves in circles where this has been a totally known about and accepted truth, I'm aware of the fact that for a lot of people this has not been obvious but I'm a bit mystified as to how. How have the messages and information on climate change not reached you?
I'm really serious asking this question and I'm grateful for any light you can throw on it.
For instance - did your parents avoid news?
Were you not taught anything about it at school?
That kind of thing. Also how old are you if you don't mind me asking?
Thank you.

@PingPowKaPowWow climate change is making life difficult for billions of people on the planet and needs tackling. We can do it, we did with the hole in the Ozone layer and there are loads of folk across the world working on innovative projects to reverse it.

Don't lose hope and don't listen to Climate Change Deniers. Think global, act local and plant more trees.🌍

I agree with you to some extent. Won't say people stop having kids but people should not have more than 1 or 2 kids. Above it, governments should make it very expensive.

Not only that but where has the S come from on the end of Stephen Hawking ?

So it's hypocrisy to be concerned about your children's future? And people should have no voice if they've had DC?

What a load of shite.🙄

140 years ago, the lightbulb was invented. In 200 years, we cannot even imagine what technology we will have available. The world is in a dire state, but there is always cause for hope.

I’m glad it’s not just me. He’s been dead a while and everyone is talking like he wrote this last week. But then again everyone seems to be carrying on like climate change is something they only heard about over breakfast. I remember writing an essay about it at school, in 1990.

Is this some other Stephen Hawkings who hasn't been dead for years or is everyone using the present tense for effect?

I quite like the way scientists write, it's factual, not emotive, not political, just facts.
Of course the world population needs to keep producing children, we just need to slow it down. Producing more babies than the world can feed or our country can house means more of our fields and woodlands are being lost.

If he is correct then these are the glory days, and humans probably don't have much longer on the earth

In terms of how long the earth's existed we've not had that much time anyway, and may or may not have a lot more

It's the arrogance that gets me though - as if, in the endless events which have happened through geological time, the pinprick which is mankind will have made so very much difference

*hawkings

I was just shocked that Hawkins is saying there is a possibility that the temperature could actually reach above boiling! I kind of thought it would get very hot such that we will have to adapt, massive competition for resources etc but things could still be possible to survive. But it’s physically impossible to survive at 250C

There is no one solution. We have do everything all at once. Having fewer kids while still burning fossil fuels won’t help.

Burning less fossil fuel is the most important thing, and until we have the technology to displace all the fossil fuel energy with renewables we have to do a lot less flying and driving fossil fueled vehicles and reduce our electricity use.

We must also not extract any new fossil fuels (no new mines, no new wells, no fracking) and put renewable energy everywhere we can - onshore wind in the UK must be built. It may only be needed for a few generations, but we do need it.

At the same time we must protect forests and oceans, and create new forests where we destroyed them in the past.

Any answer to this challenge which starts with “but…” is wrong.

The Antarctic ice is not looking good this year. 6.4 standard deviations below the mean or a 1 in 13 billion chance of there being this little ice

Ha ha yes you are! and he was actually King Cnut

• there are also many differing versions of the story!

Pretty sure the birth rate is continuing to fall and the issue is too many people living far too long past natural expiration with no quality of life (work In healthcare so see it every day and the vast amounts of waste produced e.g. chronic leg ulcers and the vast amount of bandaging needed etc)

The only thing I can do is try to ensure I earn enough money to make sure my one (adopted) child is protected for as long as possible and his children after him. I want them in the house on the hill, the bunker with Rishi or the transporter with Elon. Human life on earth will not carry on as we know it within a few generations. I can't change that. So I will protect my loved ones in whatever way I see fit for as long as I can.

When COVID hit and the world stopped, I said it was a chance to see if there was a international will to face climate change.

Oh god, were you one of those types that put memes on facebook about the planet healing itself? Every time I saw one of them I went out for a massive long drive.

I am sorry to be a pedant (not sorry) but you are badly misrepresenting Canute.

the king cried, "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws."

LOL. The world absolutely does need as many children as we have if you and millions like you plan on living longer than your working lifespan. Because however you intend to fund those years you need to have people around you engaged in paid work to enable it. We can just about manage now with the number of children we're having. If the birth rate falls any lower then it's Logan's Run time.

When COVID hit and the world stopped, I said it was a chance to see if there was a international will to face climate change.

There world realized we're drowning in bullshit. Next such even will be met much less enthusiastically.

We do need children if we need innovation!

When COVID hit and the world stopped, I said it was a chance to see if there was a international will to face climate change.

Yes, it would have been uncomfortable, but it was the time for dialogue and action and a starting point was - more than it probably ever will be - effectively handed on a plate.

But nada. Not a mention of any attempt.

We are doomed.

i keep wondering why these alarmists haven't topped themselves yet. Too soon?