Give me the reasons why you are a climate sceptic?

[malificent7]

I'm not by the way...but neither am i overly anxious about it.
Some of my friends are and are also very against Greta Thunberg etc. So is it possiblook e to be worried about climate change but anti Greta and/ or do you think climate change is baloney?

Given the recent bush fires in Australia i think we should all be aware that we are all at the mercy of our climate, even if we don't think change is man made.

Yes, it’s always the fault of “richer people”, I’ve noticed. But richer than whom? By global standards we are all incredibly well-off.

Typical well-off westerner complacent delusion. No "we" aren't. Lots of Britons are now poorer than the EU average. Your average private rental tenant only owns what they stand up in. While I do use the universal definition of "richer than me", it probably isn't a bad mark to aim at, for a beginning at least. We still clock in a long way under the UK average on environmental footprints despite recent enlargement. If you have more than basic human needs people really need to start asking themselves if things are worth their full cost, not just what's printed on the inadequate price labels.

The global economy does rely on too much tat, and transportation of it. That's kind of the point. We need to prioritise however. We will not be in a position to continue to worry about the global economy after we have all been submerged.

OK perhaps I should be more worried about China. It is the workshop of the world. Perhaps however if we all get the ships we can control in order we would be in a better position to tell them to get sorted.

The global economy does rely on too much tat, and transportation of it. That's kind of the point. We need to prioritise however

It’s really quite difficult to understand exactly what you mean by this. Your preference would be that we buy less “tat”? If that’s what you think then that’s fine, but people already have that option and although you may not like it, some of them actually like being able to buy plenty of cheap clothes, food and holidays - especially people who don’t have a lot of money. And that’s fine with me, because it’s the price you pay to live in a free society.

As ever in these discussion I don’t see any real solutions to these very complicated problems, despite all the impassioned statements about what other (always richer-than-me) people “need” to do. And that isn’t a solution at all, because lecturing other people about what they ought to do has absolutely zero impact on behaviour.

Maybe tell that to the many vocal young climate activists from developing countries, like Vanessa Nakate, Licypriya Kangujam and Leah Namugerwa to name but a few?

Tell them what? What do they want? You’ve just listed a bunch of names without further comment.

Climate change is cyclical and throughout the history of the world the temps have risen and fallen.

Yes, absolutely. Changes of 2-3 degrees in temperature took about 2-3 million years to occur and 4-5 million years to be "corrected" naturally. Since the industrial revolution, a mere 100 years ago, the planet has heated up as much as during 2-3 million of "natural climate cycling". But hey, surely that has nothing to do with us aye?

I believe we are affecting climate and that we may end up making ourselves and the creatures we know extinct from such changes. I do also believe that new species will come out of the changes and that the earth will carry on its cycle of life, even if that world isn’t hospitable to us. For most of the earths life history the planet wouldn’t have been hospitable to us as a species.

This is an interesting article: www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/07/green-new-deal-excludes-nuclear-and-would-thus-increase-emissions-just-like-it-did-in-vermont/#1c8672789afd

A key passage: Their explicit goal was to make nuclear expensive. “Our campaign stressing the hazards of nuclear power will supply a rationale for increasing regulation,” wrote the Sierra Club Executive Director in a 1975 memo to the board of Directors, “and add to the cost of the industry.”

Anti-nuclear campaigners managed to kill all but roughly 100 reactors. What got built in their place? Coal plants. Had just 400 of the promised 1,000 reactors been built, the U.S. would today be producing nearly 100 percent of its electricity from zero-emissions sources, obviating the need for a climate crusade to clean up electricity.

I’ve posted this before and I’m posting it again. We could have had a low-carbon energy policy in the USA (traditionally one of the largest emitters of CO2) but environmentalists prevented it through anti-scientific nonsense. Yet I’m supposed to listen to these people again? This time, they will be right?

Maybe if XR and Greta et al talked about nuclear policy and how the West could meet energy needs without any loss to living standards, then I’d be more supportive.

Why are we (in the West) unable to build infrastructure like nuclear plants and high speed rail? China built a vast high speed rail network in just fifteen years or so. South Korea can build nuclear power plants in five years.

Instead we are just fiddling about with unproven and expensive technology and moral panic. The things that can create ACTUAL REAL reductions are practically ignored. So I feel free to ignore their useless bleating.

Anthropogenic warming is definitely happening, you have to be a complete Luddite to deny it. And, ideally, we should do something about it. However...

We won’t make ourselves extinct, we occupy every niche on the planet.

If it warms up and billions die, there will still be billions left. And, eventually, we will form a new equilibrium.

In any event, Corona will put back global warming by a good few years by reducing population and economic activity.

Not much in the way of extinction rebellion camps with their Pret A Manger packaged food now..

JillyLilly the poorer groups of Britain are more than sick and tired of the price we are paying for your freedoms. The poorer groups will lose lives in their millions. No this is not a price worth paying. But as I said to start with, so many believe it is that we are all doomed. It will hit you eventually.

Regarding the levels of warming and this laughable insistence on climate cycles, a picture may demonstrate where words and science do not. The little ice age can be seen, if you look hard enough. xkcd.com/1732/

MangoFeverDream - you could tell them the climate activists from developing countries that, in your opinion, what their countries need is more access to cheap fossil fuels. Their climate activism and campaigning to date does not indicate that they would agree with you.

From a UK perspective, there's some good reports from Zero Carbon Britain project looking at how we could cut emissions using currently available technology:
www.cat.org.uk/info-resources/zero-carbon-britain/

Poorer groups of the World will lose lives in their millions that should have said.

The poorer groups will lose lives in their millions

Citation pls the IPCC reports have no such claim

Of course climate change is real and of course it's a direct consequence of human activity. Only the wilfully ignorant would argue otherwise.

Equally obviously, humankind as a whole is fundamentally too selfish to take the radical action that's needed to change the prognosis until it's far too late. Just look at the frothing about "human rights" on here every time someone suggests that, for example, it might be selfish to have children and certainly so to have more than one child.

We will happily hurtle right over the approaching cliff edge and then wail about how unfair it all is on the way down.

Their climate activism and campaigning to date does not indicate that they would agree with you

You have not told me what they want. What do they want?

In any case, we shouldn’t always listen to green activists. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Did you see the Forbes article I linked above? If they’d supported the USA push to continue to build nuclear power plants, they would have had nearly 100 percent of their electricity generated from zero emission sources. Road to hell paved with good intentions etc etc

It’s a huge loss.

MangoFeverDream - there is more information about the activists in the hyperlinks. Activists from around the world, including developing countries such as Uganda, Brazil and Nigeria, recently jointly wrote a letter demanding that "all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels."

all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels

This is batshit. Why would you not invest in extracting fossil fuels? Where is the energy for meeting our energy needs going to come from?

In an emergency you step out of your comfort zone and make decisions that may not be very comfortable or pleasant. And let’s be clear – there is nothing easy, comfortable or pleasant about the climate and environmental emergency

So .... seems like a drastic cutback with no real solutions offered. I would propose massive investment in rail and nuclear power, with financial incentives for people in the countryside to urbanise. I see no real proposals here? Just panic.

Oh wait.

existing sustainable technologies, research and in restoring nature

This sounds nice but what does it mean? Solar panels and wind turbines are not all that sustainable and need big inputs of fossil fuels to produce them in the first place (and no plans or ability to recycle these) so why not just use fossil fuels in the first place? Renewables (other than hydro) are not efficient and cannot function as a baseload power.

I do agree with rewilding with caveat that we are buying and transporting our food from developing countries.

ThrowingGood
You posted this “Regarding the levels of warming and this laughable insistence on climate cycles, a picture may demonstrate where words and science do not. The little ice age can be seen, if you look hard enough. xkcd.com/1732/”

Your graphic is flawed as are most climate change hysterics because it picks the coldest time in recent history as a start point and then assumes increased human activity causes warming. It is a classic case of cherry picking by picking a start point of measuring Earth temperature from the end of the last Ice Age at 20,000 BCE to today. Obviously, the Earth was cooler at the end of an Ice Age and it’s warmer now because we are between ice ages.

If you look at just the the last 400.000 years, at the mean surface temperature of the Antarctic you can see the overall pattern between Ice Ages is to get as warm as we are now plus another 2-3C warmer. See attached chart.

(Don’t forget Let’s recall that the planetary average for all of Earth history is 15 °C, but if we calculate the average over the last million years, we will get something closer to 11 or 12 °C, because Earth has mainly experienced ice ages over that time.)

Only living,
Take a look at the Earth temperature chart for the last 400,000 yrs showing the climate cycles of the ice ages.

You stated “Of course climate change is real and of course it's a direct consequence of human activity.”

So please answer me this, what we’re humans doing 140,000 to 125,000 yrs BCE to cause the climate change then? See the chart? We came out of an Ice Age and within 15,000yrs we got warmer than we are today. So, what did our ancestors do if climate change is a “direct consequence of human activity”?

the poorer groups of Britain are more than sick and tired of the price we are paying for your freedoms. The poorer groups will lose lives in their millions. No this is not a price worth paying.

Throwing where is the model that says that “poorer groups will lose lives in their millions”? The IPCC hasn’t said this, so where are you getting this from? Other than the rather obvious fact that eventually we’ll all lose our lives because we’ll all eventually die, there seems to be no factual basis for this statement at all.

It doesn’t help to work yourself and others up into a state of panic about this, especially when the evidence for your beliefs just isn’t there. Apart from anything else, panicky people make terrible decisions. And when we’re thinking about policy that could dramatically effect people’s lives, caution and certainty is crucial.

You seem to take your everyday freedoms very much for granted. What kind of a society would you like to live in, if not one in which individuals are reasonably free to decide how to live their lives?

Do you have another graph proving that the earth is flat?

*"all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels."

Just read this. It’s laughably insane, but to be fair a lot of these people have probably had the wits scared out of them by ongoing “climate crisis” indoctrination, and they’re reacting to the fear by making these extreme demands. That’s a perfect example of panicky people making terrible decisions.

Have they any idea what all our lives would be like if we all divested from fossil fuels tomorrow? So they think we’ll all be wandering through the woods, holding hands, communing with nature and gathering nuts and berries for tea? Because the reality is that It would be absolutely fucking awful for everybody. Most
of us wouldn’t last three weeks!

Humanity has spent centuries struggling to get to a point where life is not just “nasty, brutish and short”, where it can be reasonably comfortable and pleasant. More and more people across the planet should have our experience of life, but these activists are so anti-progress (and when it comes down to it, anti-humans) that they want to take us straight back there. Idiots.

But the first thing is to cut out the entirely frivolous things

Whats frivolous to you isnt to another.
Holidays to us are mental health breaks
Taking the easy route is a sanity saver for us

In an emergency you step out of your comfort zone and make decisions that may not be very comfortable or pleasant. And let’s be clear – there is nothing easy, comfortable or pleasant about the climate and environmental emergency

Thats if you agree there an emergency.
Like with corona, hysteria gets people no where with me.
Come at me with shrieking hysteria and i switch off.

Do you have another graph proving that the earth is flat?

Hilarious Only Living. So, you are saying you believe the artistic cartoon sketch posted by ThrowingGood over the climate cycle graph taken from a published peer reviewed, scientific journal Nature (did you not see the source? ) which I posted.

And I’m the unscientific flat earther one. Lol.

Whats frivolous to you isnt to another.

Quite. It’s all relative. I’m sure that people with no access to proper sources of energy would be amazed at the “frivolity” of switching in your central heating every day.

There is a very nasty authoritarian streak running through environmental activism, and a strong desire to curtail individual freedom. It is also weirdly old-school religious: these people act as If they have a god-given right to impose rules on other people about how they should live their lives. At the heart of it is another religious belief that is basically straight from the Old Testament: mankind is sinful, will be punished by the wrath of God, and must atone for their collective sins, led by High Priestess Greta Thunberg who is suffering to save us from ourselves. In a strange way there is really nothing new here.

let’s be clear – there is nothing easy, comfortable or pleasant about the climate and environmental emergency

“Let’s be clear” that you are using language that is non-scientific, non-specific and designed to provoke an emotional reaction. It’s not your fault because it’s language that you have been trained to use, but that doesn’t make it true or helpful.

I'm not a sceptic, but Greta has essentially been groomed for this by her parents, her father is a largely unsuccessful actor who now 'manages' her mother , a singer who unsurprisingly wrote a book that talks about climate change, I wonder how many that would've sold if they didn't use their daughter to promote it as 'a family written book'. Greta just shouts and cries fairly typical teen behaviour, but she is already diagnosed as having Asperger's so God only knows what effect all of this public exposure will have in her now and in the long term. They're using their daughter to get the fame and notoriety neither of them achieved as celebrities in their own right.