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.

I also work in academia. I understand the pressure to conform to certain ideas, but you do not see this level of consensus across government, academic and private research bodies unless there is a solid base of knowledge and data supporting it.

You do see a healthy amount of debate within the community on the speed and extent of climate change. It's true that here, we do not know enough yet. But the basic fact that humans have contributed to climate change and its effects are likely to be extremely damaging -- the balance of evidence supports this.

It would be career suicide for so many people and organisations to sign up to this idea and then it turns out not to be true. Who would ever take them seriously again? Peer pressure alone cannot explain the consensus.

There is some uncertainties and difficulties in modelling exactly what is going on, of course

Option is either to wait until we a totally certain, or go with the best current understanding

If we wait until we are totally exact in the answers, and things pan out as expected, it would be too late to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Over the last 20 years, every time understanding has improved, it has continued to tell the same story.

The effect of humans on our climate is strongly influenceing the climate beyond any natural factors and the impact if unchecked will make human life difficult as a minimum.

75% of climate change denial social media posts are from bots it seems. Making it seem like more people are in denial than is in fact the case. Bit like tobacco companies used to pretend the link between smoking and cancer was not really clear,

would (seriously) like to see evidence about making energy from renewable sources and air, as someone has mentioned. Hopefully it is realised that onshore wind is a disaster in the UK landscape and climate. Offshore wind isn't pretty and shares the same short life and pollution issues but is a bit better.

I still maintain that if we are to make less of a mess we need to make some harsh choices. In practice no-one will - just look at the attitudes on here.

as for Thunberg's policies - I'd also like to see what they are, I can't find them.

if the article in last Saturday's Times is to believed, she has had serious mental health issues and I'm not sure this kind of exposure is good for her. Especially without the backup of sound policies which all who want to influence need. She appears to have been home educated so truanting on a Friday won't have made any difference, they have flexible timetables.

@dustibooks - very good point and will seriously piss off MN. Nice one.

To note - no, the hole in the ozone layer has no vanished. It is shrinking (probably due to efforts to stop damaging it have allowed it to replete itself) but it is still there. There is one forming over the North Pole too, I believe, and it is thought the ongoing effects of the manmade/caused hole will continue throughout this century in the form of increased temperatures and increased skin cancers.

Acid rain also still exists, but is much less of a problem than it used to be because of measures that were taken to reduce fossil fuel pollution.

I can't believe people are looking at these things and saying "hey, we used to say they were a big problem, but you don't hear about them now. Obviously they weren't a real problem at all" without realising that actually, the reason they are no longer a real problem is because we DID take action then.

I also read a fascinating article about Greta Thunberg recently. According to her mother she was a mess. Being able to focus on the environment has allowed to her to function. I got the feeling her parents support her mostly because of that. I would have hated for my child to have reached the state she was in. The article is here

Granted, there might be some rewriting of history to show the family to their best advantage. But still.

Peer pressure alone cannot explain the consensus

No, but along with other issues including money it can certainly contribute to it
I'm frankly not convinced about the "career suicide" either, given the numbers accessing the endless funding. Who's going to focus on one persuaded "researcher" among many, when we remember that even East Anglia's Phil Jones ("why should I make data available to you when you're trying to find something wrong with it?") continued to be backed by peers who doubtless realised it could easily have been one of them?

www.uea.ac.uk/about/-/uea-researchers-on-highly-cited-list

as for Thunberg's policies - I'd also like to see what they are, I can't find them

Perhaps that's because she doesn't appear to have any beyond shouting at a few politicians, fronting a few rallies and generally acting as the latest fashionable totem?

It's not so much that I am a sceptic but Greta Thunberg does worry me; she is a child and she's going to give herself an aneurysm at this rate. Children should not be so frightened all the time and that's what she advocates because that's what she has been taught..she is a puppet being used by adults pushing an agenda and the only reason people are listening to her is because she is a child but that's very disturbing to me because we should not be teaching children that they're all going to die. Teach children about the environment and plastic and the important of taking care of the plant certainly, but stop scaring them into thinking they're going to die any day now.

Having said that from the point of view of a scientist who DOES work with climate change she has done what we as scientists have not been able to do - get the message out to the majority.

One of the many reasons why politically and economically that climate change and ecological disaster has not been given the prominance is that most politicians knowledge of science and STEM in general is woefully poor. The lack of STEM knowledge amongst politicians is a serious hindance (and rampant cherry picking to fit party lines) is one of the reason why technological progress and adoption is hindered since there has to be a strong basis of scientific knowledge to make informed decisions on policy.

I'm not remotely sceptical. It's one of the most urgent issues facing our times. But the points raised earlier about the ozone layer etc are what ironically give me hope. There was a will to fix these things, just as there's a growing will to tackle carbon emissions.

Admittedly some of that will has the wrong focus. End users are those who can make the least difference, although that's not to say they shouldn't try. The amount of rubbish generated by corporations like Amazon, with their reams of cardboard packaging, is huge. They're now on record with a clear commitment to tackling this.

The CEO of Heathrow Airport was on R4 Today the other morning, talking about how they intend to make an impact. They are wanting to run all flights through their airport on waste-recycled aviation fuel, using technology that's allegedly existed since WW2 (used by the Germans). Unbelievable that this has been available for 75 years; why on earth have we been cooling our heels for that amount of time? Individuals cutting back on the frequency of their flights can only do so much: this can potentially revolutionize the impact of travel on the environment.

The target of 2034 for the last combustion engines in the UK does seem a bit ambitious without a clear commitment to developing the alternative. But who knows?

These are only starting points, but they are moves in the right direction. And they're the positive, practical issues that might actually have a positive effect. Shrieking at anyone who'll listen about how evil and destructive human beings are might be very cathartic, but it's not going to help the planet or anyone else!

"What makes you think that we can heat up the planet?"

A basic understanding of science.

Carbon dioxide (and to a lesser extent other gases) cause heat that would normally escape the planet to stay within the atmosphere.

Since the industrial revolution the amount of c02 in the atmosphere has dramatically increased due to the the burning of fossil fuels.

Consequentially, the planet has and is heating up.

Around 98% of the science on the subject agrees that the planet is heating as a direct result of human activity.

I find that people who are climage change 'skeptics fall into 1 of 2 camps.

1. People who genuenly don't accept manmade climate change is happening. These people are idiots.
2. People who accept it, but don't care. These people are selfish idiots.

Oh, and #3

3. People who dismiss people trying to educate them on the matter because they are younger than them.

I’m not a climate sceptic, the truth of it is that I just don’t really care. Climate changes; it always has and it always will.

Greta is a sanctimonious piece of work and I would be embarrassed and ashamed if she were my child. She puts people off the climate cause who might otherwise be interested.

You can find out what Greta wants by googling for 5 seconds.

She wants governments to invest in and subsidise sustainable energy resources instead of fossil fuels, and to agree on more ambitious goals within the existing global framework.

For individuals, she suggests flying less, eating less meat, joining an activist movement, and voting.

All these comments that she's just screeching and being angry and not saying anything useful -- people have been saying this about female activists for centuries. You don't have to like her or agree with her approach, but she is proposing concrete changes and raising a huge amount of awareness.

Being a piece of work is far better than being a piece of nothing at all. Just sayin'.

Being a piece of work is far better than being a piece of nothing at all. Just sayin'.

JohnMcCainsDeathStare I disagree. The world would be a better and happier place if she just shut up her whining.

I work in this area. We absolutely are affecting the climate at an unsustainable rate. And I take the view it doesn’t matter if you believe in climate change; deforestation and land degradation is occurring because of human demand. That in itself is unsustainable before you even look at the rise in greenhouse gases. As a species we need to re-evaluate our place in the world and remember that we’re also nature rather than othering it.

As for Greta and extinction rebellion- their message isn’t wrong but they’re not saying it in the right way. People need to be shown how we can change our behaviour, decrease consumer demand and live in tune with our own biodiversity a bit better. And messages about what we can do should be supported by messages of why we should.

"The world would be a better and happier place if she just shut up her whining."

ODFO. She's not whining. She is absolutely correct that her generation and generations of people not even born yet are the ones who are going to suffer because of selfish arseholes who refuse to make even the smallest change.

"the truth of it is that I just don’t really care. "

And this is why we are fucked.

But it’s not small changes. Look how coronavirus has cleared the air over China.

We need to make radical changes to our lifestyle and the first thing to go would be modern technology. I have a friend who was utterly shocked at the carbon footprint of the World Wide Web.

You can find out what Greta wants by googling for 5 seconds

Not IME I'm afraid; I've spent a lot longer than that on it and found only buzzwords and an almost total lack of substance. There's so little detail that it basically becomes "somebody should do something", which might appeal to her teenage fans but has little resonance with the kind of minds called on to make decisions

FWIW I do agree she has a certain awareness-raising quality; I'm just not sure that - at least among adults - it's the kind of awareness she'd hope for

Isn’t there a young lad who has invented something to clear the oceans of plastic? Far more deserving of publicity.

Boyan Slat

Climate change is real but it’s not made made, it’s not a crisis or an emergency and we can only minutely influence it.

Not all climate scientists agree that man’s influence on climate change is creating a crisis. Science isn’t done by majority vote anyway. All but one scientist thought disease was caused by bad air, but it was the minority view that had correctly identified bacteria, viruses etc as the causes. A large number of scientists who do not agree are geologists who have studied the Earths climate over a span of billions of years, not just the past 144,000 in which we’ve had these current polar ice caps. Yes the polar ice caps regularly melt and form. That’s why studying only the ancient air in the ice caps only gives you a fraction of our climate history. Its even a fraction of human history given humans are 3.8million years old. We’ve seen the polar ice caps melt and form. Lived through ice ages and hotter ages than the now or the projected few degree increases.

"Climate change is real but it’s not made made, it’s not a crisis or an emergency and we can only minutely influence it. "

Three utterly bullshit statements in one sentence! Well done, that takes some doing.