What should be done about climate change?

[Rfthyhuj]

There are many people on another thread salivating at the idea of the five climate change protestors going to jail. I’m not an expert, but I know enough to understand that global warming is already having catastrophic effects on the world’s poorest.

What can the world do? What can the UK government do? I believe that we should up aid funding to allow developing countries to invest in green technology. I’ve never thought about it in huge detail, but am really shocked at the vitriol shown to the protestors for attempting to raise awareness of how serious the situation is. I don’t want another debate about the protest or the prison sentence, but am really interested in hearing about what people believe should happen to create change and avoid disaster?

There are records in tree rings, glaciers, peat bogs...they might not have been made with a thermometer, but they exist and scientists can interpret them.

Random thoughts while at work:
A pity that some of the first publicity to reach mass of our (UK) population were the Hippies/AntiCapitalists mob. It did not encourage ordinary people to believe or support the idea whereas we understood and agreed to modify activity about the Hole over the Antarctic.
In some ravines or canyons in Canada we can see that glaciers have grown and melted 3 times before humans were on the earth.
The heat that we have added to this natural heating was generated about 100 years ago. We now see the effects.
Over the last 50 years motorcars have become more efficient, far les polluting. Family cars like Fords and Morris 10 used a gallon of fuel for 30/32 miles. Now a modern Car will cover 55 miles for every gallon. Personal transport is not the problem.
Natural Gas can run a power station and generate huge amounts of electricity.

The latest money making ideas of Land Owners to take farming land out of production for Solar panels makes little sense.

In the UK the government needs to invest in renewable energy and public transport but in a more practical way like rural bus services and not grand projects like HS2. Most teenagers around here learn to drive and get a car because the public transport is so unreliable. They also need to make changes to building regulations so that house builders use much better insulation, passive haus buildings don't need central heating or air con which would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and imported fuel for heating. They could also pass laws on packaging so there is less of it and it can be universally recycled in the UK and not sent off to rot in the Malaysian rainforest. Globally we need to stop destroying the rainforest and rich countries need to invest in anything which encourages sustainable development in countries with rainforest.

On a personal level we could all reduce food waste, meat consumption, fast fashion and carbon emitting travel. I don't think telling people to stop anything works and it would be futile without international cooperation anyway.

I'm not convinced that there is any sort of 'climate emergency'.

If we look a the Geological record, the planet has been much hotter (5.5C) than this during recent interglacial periods and also much, much hotter (25C) during the more distant interglacial periods. All those cycles occurred without any human intervention.

We're still technically in an ice age because there are glaciers and polar icecaps - which is very much abnormal for our planet. We're simply falling victim to status quo bias by believing that we're currently experiencing the 'standard natural climate' for planet earth and that this is also the optimum climate for planet earth.

Given the wild swings in temperature that can be seen in these charts, and that we're 5.5C below the 'standard' interglacial highs of the past 500k years, I really don't think we should be shitting the bed over the planet warming by a mere 1.5C.

We're currently 2/3rds of the way through a natural warming cycle. Any anthropological element is dwarfed by the natural warming that has already occurred since the 'end' of the last ice age and isn't projected to take us anywhere near the natural highs that have previously occurred.

I'm really struggling to understand all the hysteria.

Google Climate Alarmism OP.

The debate has been hijacked by extreme elements, and Roger Hallam is one of those. Even the ICCP agrees that these extreme apocalyptic predictions are unhelpful and could even be counterproductive.

JSO get very exercised about air travel, yet I assume they use the Internet, which emits more CO2 a year than all global air traffic combined. If climate disaster is so imminent why are we all be encouraged to do absolutely everything online, including getting rid of cash altogether?

The vegan lobby want to abolish livestock farming and re wild the land, yet wetlands emit the dreaded methane as well, and just as much deforestation is occurring to grow crops for bio fuels as for livestock.

Live a good life, reuse, recycle, conserve energy, invest in new emerging technologies and gather information from a variety of reliable sources and not from nutters like JSO or the nutters on the other side who think it's all a con.

I wonder why we need to make the poor poorer when we have no impact on global climate

Ice core data.

https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/

Do ice ages come and go slowly or rapidly?

Records show that ice ages typically develop slowly, whereas they end more abruptly. Glacials and interglacials within an ice age display this same trend.
On a shorter time scale, global temperatures fluctuate often and rapidly. Various records reveal numerous large, widespread, abrupt climate changes over the past 100,000 years. One of the more recent intriguing findings is the remarkable speed of these changes. Within the incredibly short time span (by geologic standards) of only a few decades or even a few years, global temperatures have fluctuated by as much as 15°F (8°C) or more. For example, as Earth was emerging out of the last glacial cycle, the warming trend was interrupted 12,800 years ago when temperatures dropped dramatically in only several decades. A mere 1,300 years later, temperatures locally spiked as much as 20°F (11°C) within just several years. Sudden changes like this occurred at least 24 times during the past 100,000 years. In a relative sense, we are in a time of unusually stable temperatures today—how long will it last?

I believe it's happening and believe the science and the economics. But how will the UK decarbonising effect global emissions.

Make the poor poorer?

Just six months into the Ukraine war, gas was nine times more expensive than renewables….

It’s government investment in green tech that will enable the poor to heat their homes. Not continued reliance on volatile regimes that happen to have fossil fuel on their land.

What should be done probably ain’t going to happen but.

We - humanity -need to pour in the kind of money we put into covid into carbon capture, reforestation and clean energy.

Then we will have to accept a lot of what we have today may not be available until this is sorted - air travel, cars etc.

Countries like China and others will need to massively cut down and likely will loose some industries.

It would hurt - a lot.

Sorry but Carbon Capture does not work. Universities in several countries have been working on this since about 2010. Encouraging information in laboratory but will not scale up.

But what exactly is it you think we should do, personally, that will make a jot of difference? My footprint is pretty miniscule anyway

This was due to sanctions.

And…

Was in the us this summer and my god we all had a shock! Both hotels we were in had plastic everything, the bins outside were overflowing with plastic bottles- not a sign of recycling anywhere we went then on tv adds for disposable mops and wipes and then on the roads gigantic monsters of cars, jeeps and trucks everywhere. Maybe it was just where we were but I live in Ireland and we were wondering why we bother with all our separating, reusing etc etc.

Yes it was like that when we were on holiday in Europe and really difficult to recycle

Quite soul destroying

when I was growing up,my late df refused to allow aerosols because he said we would destroy the ozone layer. Now apparently, the hole has closed up
The hole closed up because we stopped using cfc's in aerosols. It wasn't a conspiracy theory!
We need to massively reduce consumption. Otherwise we cannot 'just stop oil'. My issue with JSO is that we need buy in and behaviour change for this, and them antagonising is counterproductive. Especially when they appear to be massive hypocrites who like to disrupt people who are poorer and less privileged than they are while they carry on as usual.

recently read that China uses more concrete every 3 years than the United States has used in the last century. If this is true (and I think it probably is), then you haven’t a buckleys chance of stopping climate change
They have also emitted more carbon in 8 years than we have since the Industrial Revolution. Some of that is because they make crap for us, and one of the things we can do is stop buying cheap crap on Temu and Shein etc, as well as Amazon, but much of it is by China for China. An issue is that the West has had a very comfortable life compared to the rest of the world. Now developing countries like China, India and Brazil want a piece of it.but thst will drive climate change.

I don’t know why you’re so upset. I very clearly asked ‘what can the world do?’, not individuals. But instead of a proper debate, most people have just come on to stay their own personal choices as to what they do or don’t do, which isn’t what I hoped this thread would be.

But there we are. It has opened my eyes to how in denial many people are.

I guess that government need to tax flights so that the actual cost to the climate is reflected in the prices. No more cheap flights. Ditto petrol and probably all fuel. Stop importing cheap goods and food. All houses insulated to the highest standard. We all consume less and reduce our carbon footprint. Of course it's not going to happen as no one is going to get elected on that ticket. So I guess that future generations will curse us for our inaction. Just stop oil protesters will have their name in lights.

I feel that climate change and environmental issues often get conflated, which makes the waters muddy.

we should be focussing our efforts to manage our environment better, with a focus on re-use, recycle, reducing consumerism and stop shipping our issues abroad so we look good on the world stage. Net zero is a load of rubbish, all it means to me is that we have successfully pushed our waste elsewhere and haven’t changed anything.

climate change is inevitable, humans don’t like to feel they don’t have control hence all the pointing fingers, panic and need to feel like we are doing something about it. As PPs have said, if we take a long term view of global temperatures, we are actually within norms, we just don’t like the pace of the change we are experiencing, and possibly yes, our activity may be contributing to an accelerated rate of change, but the change was always going to happen.

the global “we” needs to focus on taking better care of our environment and supporting those in affected areas to adapt to the changes they are experiencing. Thats how we move through this together as a global community.

Global population has doubled since 1950 so 2.5 billion more need/want resources. For those in denial you know that we are the species that are triggering the crisis that may not exist. We can destroy entire species even cultures/civilizations very easily esp if money is involved. Our children or grandchildren may be cursing us in 50 years time.

I'm optimistic. Birth rates are collapsing around the world, this might solve the problem by itself.

Not everywhere. Japan and Europe yes but eg Africa it's rising.