To ask what you think about global warming?

[deeedeee]

After seeing comments on other threads , I'm wondering, what do most people think?

Are you worried about man-made climate change?

Are you trying to change any of your behaviour because of it?

Or are you not concerned?

Intellectually, I know this is the most significant problem the world faces. It will make Brexit look like a minor VAT reappraisal.

Emotionally, it seems too vast and uncontrollable. Any one of us can make no discernible difference.

So I'm pretty much doing nothing. It's appalling.

when the scientific consensus was that we would experience a new ice age very soon

It was a minority in the acaedmic scientific community, however the idea was dispoportionately popular in media and entertainment, because it made a good story or plot. I remember being a little kid, under 5, and hearing about how the world might go into a new ice age (complete, somehow, with woolly mammoths). I thought it was very exciting, hadn't realised we were supposed to be scared.

It IS the biggest problem we're facing. Which is why I find it so strange no one talks about it, or has relegated it to a side category - "environmental issues", something lefties care about.

It's hardly a "fashionable concern", people (like me) have been worrying about it for a longetime. It's only now, that we're starting to see the effects, that people are beginning to take notice. Nothing to do with the fashion zeitgeist, more that people are being made homeless or dying from drought. Something it seems few give a shit about.

yy penny

Realclimate.org on the state of research in the 1970s

Also the population issue is a complete red herring too.

carbon footprint by country It's predominantly the industrialised west where birthrates are very low which is responsible for the greatest amount of carbon emissions. Yes, it could get worse still if the rest of the world started to match our carbon footprint, but those of us in countries with birthrates at or below replacement level are totally fucking the climate, with little to no help from countries with higher birthrates.

I care about it, but our lives are structured in a way whereby everything we do it having an effect on the planet.

Everything is produced and consumed to excess; fast fashion and clothing (primark etc), new/better electronics (mobiles/tvs etc) even food - just look at the food waste of supermarkets as they stock more than is ever needed.

Then there is electricity, fossil fuels are burnt and electricity is loaded into the national grid, and thus, needs to be used/offloaded somehow. The advent of Economy 7/10 was so people would use more electricity in the night, not because electricity at night was produced more efficiently or that your supplier was being nice offering cheap electricity, it was because they needed to get rid of the electricity produced. British Gas are doing a promotion at the moment - where you can choose either a saturday or sunday, and all your electricity between 9 and 5pm will be free. Yes it may encourage some people to use things like washers/driers at the weekend. But when a company like BG is offering "free" use of a resource, it makes you wonder.

Nothing is free and money always wins.

I'm an active member of Greenpeace. I try to do my bit but unfortunately one family can't reverse what has happened. We need entire countries to be making the plunge. Even though the UK is doing its bit, we could do more. And we need countries like the US, China and India to pull their finger out as well.

Except for the little publicised fact that the Earth has actually been cooling for the last 5 years and the warming that was happing before was also recorded on other planets in our solar system and more to do with sun activity than anything else.
As for overuse of resources, absolutely, but going vegan is about the best thing you can do to reduce this.
A more pressing issue, that is mainly being ignored, is the almost inevitable collapse of the current financial system

The earth has been cooling? Yeah, okay.

35,000 + hits on google scholar for global warming hiatus

For a little publicised fact, that's a hell of a lot of peer-reviewed research.

Ocean heat uptake plus no big El Ninos for a decade or so, plus chaos. Seems to have come to an end now.

Honestly not really concerned about it at all.

I agree it's a massively significant issue for the human race. As an individual, I don't feel that there is much I can do to stop it.

To be honest, if I could see into the future, I'd be surprised if the human race hasn't died out within a few hundred years due to ecological disasters. But hey, in the wider context of the universe, who is going to know or care how we became extinct?

I'm not being flippant. I do genuinely think this.

Btw I am actually a really positive person in my day to day life!

MostlyHet agreed, but obviously hasn't been publicised enough to reach the likes of SilentBiscuits or most of the rest of the UK....hence this thread

No, Beg, you misunderstand me completely. The recent hiatus period does not mean that global warming has ceased - if you look at the articles on it, you will see that (a) the issue is partly one of differential uptake of heat - the ocean has been warming more than the land, and once things equilibrate, the land will start to warm up again (hence last year being the hottest on record, and this year looking set to exceed it), (b) the increase is not monotonic, and it's not that unlikely that you get "flatter" periods in the general upward trend and (c) there's considerable internal variability in the climate - we happen to have been through a decade or so of relatively low ENSO activity, following a particularly big El Nino in 1997-8, so that has again mitigated some of the upward trend temporarily - but only temporarily.

You're kidding yourself if you think the hiatus period means we have nothing to worry about.

I'll take it more seriously when the government stops plans to build a new runway so we can pollute faster, or stops plans for a faster railway system for the rich.

Big businesses still use far too much oil based (plastic) packaging which we are expected to dispose of in a special plastic bin so that it can be reused if deemed acceptable.

Global warming, flooding, over population and famine are all concerns, the question is do we deal with it now and stop/change our ways while we may be able to turn it around, even if it means giving up our easy lives, or do we keep on the same way and leave a bigger mess for our dc/dgc?

This requires a major rethink on the way we live our lives though.

The warming process is NOT linear, but the hiatus doesn't mean the world is cooling! The oceans warming up is a really big problem.

isthereglobalcooling.com

The Guardian did an article 2 years back saying climate change is total baloney HERE.

That website is made by a car salesman and makes a load of wildly bonkers and unsubstantiated claims. I just checked out his corresponding Facebook page - links to the Express.co.uk and also stories about the weather! (Weather =/= climate).

You might help your case if you linked to something a little more credible. Like NASA, or the IPCC?

Sorry forgot the

e1y1 you know that's satire, right? It even says so at the bottom of the article.

Haha yes that would've helped!

e1y1 the guardian has run a few articles on just that over the last 4 years

Haha

"vegan for the environment"? How does that work exactly? Do you think arable farming is somehow not destroying natural habitats or polluting land and waterways with pesticides and other chemicals? Overconsumption and overpopulation are not mitigated by eating turnip instead of chicken.

Sorry meant the telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html