This is it - climate change is really beginning to bite

It's not about being noble, or putting oneself through anything. My original comment was to a poster who had expressed that she felt worried about the climate, and in a subsequent post suggested that perhaps she ought to adopt the more fickle outlook of a previous poster who was essentially shrugging and saying that 'The earth will be fine, humanity will be wiped out and good riddance.' I was suggesting that the mental gymnastics required to minimise our own authentic emotional response to the warming climate (worry, sadness, anger etc), are not always helpful. Better face reality and make provisions than kick the can down the road by telling ourselves that it'll be alright somehow.

The irony of people who reject Darwin becoming paradigms of his work is making me question my atheism. If there is a God, they sure have my sense of humour.

Somehow I doubt that most of the residents of Texas will accept that climate change is responsible. Did you hear what the Governor said when asked who was to blame? Apparently it's just one of those things and only "losers" look to apportion blame.

Texans voted heavily for the people who were going to implement Project 2025, who considered the NWS and NOAA to be "hotbeds of climate alarmism" and wanted them defunded. It may sound cruel to say it, but this is what they voted for.

Kerr County sat on Federal funding and refused to use it for early warning systems because it came from "the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House" - which is a bloody cheeky thing for Trump supporters to call Biden.

Summer is hot call the papers!

It's hard to comprehend the level of narcissism and idiocy that believes it is in anyway remotely possible to control the climate.

Imagine splitting a group of people on a desert island into two groups. One says: "Right, we need: shelter, water, food. Let's get cracking".

The other group says: "If we work hard to not have any fires, just sip from rockpools and wait for something to eat to drop past we'll be OK". Presumably before deciding to use leaves as currency.

One of the most selfish articles I ever read was by a journalist over 60 I think.

He was someone who had flown all over the world multiple times a month. Had been to multiple countries etc etc.

But now he had come to his senses.

And he was lamenting the state of the world. Judging people who want to go one maybe 1-2 holidays a year. How people fly too much and he was going to stop using aeroplanes, get ris of his passport and everyone should do the same- or else climate change.

I thought- OK for him to say that at his age when he's pretty much seen most of the world isn't it.

Climate has always changed but it doesn't happen at random.

<pedant alert>But it is chaotic.

You can carry on living as if those things will make a difference. That is one way of living your life as if life will continue and it's not a bad way.

Maybe not berating people for being selfish and uneducated though. That never won anyone over anyway, you'll just piss people off and make yourself cross.

Obviously we've all read this - we are discussing climate change aren't we ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2-kiloyear_event

Rather than looking back a piddling few decades - and even then only in bad faith to continue arguing over the causes - I repeat my suggestion that energy would be much better directed to mitigating the effects of inevitable climate change.

Maybe realising it has happened before and irrevocably affected human civilisations in the past In fact the decline of the very first empire was because of climate change. So why should our be any different ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_Empire

Oh my god, we had summers like this in the 90s. We’ve always had spells when it’s been hot for ages.

It’s only been a few days 😂

@PencilsInSpace

"That's a form of denial but it's the only way to carry on living."

Why is that the only way to carry on living? Why can't we carry on living while replacing fossil fuels with wind turbines and solar panels? Why can't we carry on living while replacing petrol or diesel cars with public transport or electric cars? Why can't we carry on living while using planes less? Especially when they are used to import roses from Kenya.

Eating less meat isn't going to kill us. Beef isn't an essential item for human happiness.

This isn't about despair. It's about selfish people who want to keep flying and driving SUVs. It's about uneducated people who think that they know better than scientists. Climate has always changed but it doesn't happen at random. There is always a reason for it. It's not complicated.

Until you starve to death. If the South Island and the UK are underwater you might be a little naive as to the impact that will have on you and your 'holiday home', however high above sea level or is.

To face the future from a place of authenticity would be to face it with despair. No, I don't think that's how we face it best. People don't cope well with despair.

What you call rhetorical bypassing or a philosophical sleight of hand, others might call seeing the situation from a wider perspective.

It helps me to remember that individually we are only ever on this planet for a tiny blip of time anyway.

It helps me to remember that the universe is vast and it's vanishingly unlikely that earth is the only planet to have evolved complex life.

Those things are just as true as the devastating future our children face.

I don't see how it does you or anyone else any good to stay with your sense of despair for the sake of authenticity.

All we can do is carry on living our lives as if life will continue and embrace happiness wherever we find it. That's a form of denial but it's the only way to carry on living. It's the only way humans have ever lived in the face of every disaster we have ever endured. Our children will do that too, right up to the end. It's just how humans are.

Apparently it's about 2% when including abroad.
Which to be fair is not that bad considering we are just under 1% of world population in western consumerist country. We have also dropped a lot.
I belive largest issue is transport. Providing solid and afford public transport so moving people from one person daily drive to work, moving to green hgvs etc would make bigger dent than people dropping that steak a month they have... But people are easier to bully into submission than companies and government.
My mum takes public transport to work on mainland even though she has car. It's cheaper than driving, takes 15 min more BUT she has freedom to read not just stare at cars in front of her so it's not wasted time.
Trains here can be extortionate. Anyone remembers the guy who flew (i think) Sheffield to berlin then london because it was cheaper than train?

If you look at the death stats during heat waves in Europe you'll find the elderly die in the heat just as readily there.

I agree with you. I live in sheltered accommodation and my landlord has blocks of flats up and down the country. The flats don't have windows in the bathrooms or kitchens. It's important to be able to let warm moist air out instead of being reliant on extractor fans which don't seem to do a lot.

Even more important is being able to open a window on one side of the flat and another on the opposite side to allow cross ventilation. Opening windows at dawn is an excellent way to cool a flat. We're talking about older people here who are vulnerable to heat, many die in heatwaves.

In my flat, unlike other flats I have lived in, I have East and South facing windows. I used to live in a flat where all the windows were on the South side of the flat. I pity the person living there now. Why is no one thinking of shutters for the windows like in other countries?

Well that's their problem 😆

If you’re relying on the rock record-it’s not thousands of years we’re talking about it’s much longer timescales, millions and tens of millions. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of years of higher resolution climate information comes from ice records-which are obviously only a snapshot of the earths history since earth has been cold enough to have ice, estimated at a bit less than a million years of history. The earth is 4.5billion years old and a lot of climate change has happened in that time, and a lot of animals have come and gone. Mass exinctions are a normal part of behaviour on earth (not just the dinosaurs!)

It’s the British way - always expecting “someone else” to do it! Whether paying more tax, or driving less, or flying less or recycling more - it’s always “someone else” who should be doing it!

They would if the homegrown oil and gas industry wasn’t being decimated by 78% tax

I hadn’t thought before about climate refugees. How the fuck will we able to financially support them when AI by then will already have taken most of our jobs?

Yeah, I sort of agree. I don't deny climate change at all, and I am actually pretty worried about the state of things - and things to come. But I do remind myself that scientists are just people, and they do get things wrong to a degree.

Also, we are getting our info overwhelmingly through the media - and experienced scientists they are not. Statistics are much more difficult to interpret accurately than headline grabbers would have you believe.

Again, I'm not denying climate change - but certainly history is littered with doom and gloom predictions that haven't come to pass in their entirety or exactly how it was suggested.

I'm authentically enjoying this good weather. #trueself

It's coming, one way or another - however noble it is to sit with the 'authenticity' day in day out, why put yourself through that?