This isn't our heat wave, but the next one could be

[orangeleavesinautumn]

Or if we mess up the jet stream, arctic winters.

We have really messed up horrifically, haven't we.

I am scared its too late to put right

That’s totally wrong. Our UK emissions reduced by 20% over the pandemic just from people not using their cars as much. That’s a huge reduction.

For some reason everyone seems to think that it’s the big fossil fuel companies and China that have all the power to change and we have none. But we BUY the fuels and exports - and if we stop in the west by switching to public transport and changing our home energy use we can reduce emissions by a huge amount.

The solution is the human race needs to decrease in size dramatically in order to mitigate its impact on the planet, there are too many of us.

Yes I agree, but in countries like China and S Korea there is a declining birth rate and people are being encouraged to have more children as it’s seen as a problem.
Also I’m sure I’ve seen posts about the declining birth rate in UK being a problem.
There seems to be contradiction here.

Just don't bother arguing with someone called Emmamoo 😂

Our kitchen is 25 years old and will probably do another 15, I will be 80 then or dead so won't care. So many new kitchens, extensions and new bathrooms on MN

Id like to see a ban on all plastic grass (except for registered sports pitches)

And supertax on SUVs (we need vehicles to be smaller and lighter)

Right. But do you think this would change anything?

This is the problem. People squabbling about irrelevancies which will make absolutely no difference.

A sensible population would be looking at what policies they would like their Government to implement to protect them as far as possible from the inevitable, rather than pretending that this isn't going to happen if people just buy smaller cars and stop installing astroturf.

We do have declining birth rate but does it matter now.

what we are seeing with climate change was done when the worlds population was far lower.

And most of the future damage will be done by 3 or 4 billion of us, pandemics will almost certainly kill of the poor, the very people who don't have much in the way of a carbon footprint, wishing TB on the population is awful, terrible way to die.... if your a physicist, god help us.

What a lot of nonsense. You could not be more wrong if you tried 😂

The van fleet at our nearest employers are ALREADY electric and recharged on renewables, which we need to build more of. Scaling of this kind of thing is how to achieve energy independence from Putin. Extracting new fossil fuels from the North Sea to sell on the open market will maintain our dependence. So no thanks.

So a team of Chinese people came to fit the solar panels on my roof then? I don’t think so! Actually the panels were manufactured in Wales, and fitted by a local family firm, boosting the local economy. Sorry if that’s inconvenient but it’s reality.

And no, building codes for new homes are totally inadequate. You only have to look at the complaints on the Facebook pages of volume house builders.

It about doing what you can control and afford. So for me this is what I do:

• work in renewable energy
• have one child
• have one small engine car in the household
• improve energy saving measures on a big-ish Victorian home
• have grass and some wild edges in the garden.
• eat high quality locally sourced meat, organic dairy, more veg and be mindful of food miles
• limit clothes and home shopping
• use ethical funds for investment (bit of an oxymoron!)
• pressuring politicians in a personal capacity both locally and nationally

It's not perfect but it's small sustainable changes. I see energy security (and sadly food security) being big issues in the mid-term too

To put it simply we're all fucked, and we only have ourselves to blame. All for wealth. We've been warned about it for years but the government's have ignored it, like they do everything else that doesn't make them any money.

We're fucked and we only have ourselves to blame

True but all this self flagellating helps no one. Action is needed. My fury is directed at governments and the big businesses who keep them in power, who have done NOTHING.

Again, "we we we". No it's not the little people like us, who are ultimately powerless. Yes we can make choices, but they have no effect.

It's governments who are to blame. Those in power. They have chosen to look the other way.

The thing is the money they earn from destroying the planet will be useless when they dont have a planet to live on themselves

There were people on a thread a few weeks ago, quite a lot of posters, saying that they buy a new duvet and pillows every year rather than clean them or just wear them out. And big businesses will encourage this because they make money out of it. We are beyond walking to the shops and eating less meat, it needs to be huge global changes from governments and large corporations which won’t happen.

What a depressing thread. People arguing about child benefit caps and holidays and cars and recycling and astroturf. Irrelevant.

If nobody in the UK ever created any pollution again, if the entire population of the UK was vapourized overnight, it would make NO difference to what is going to happen now.

If you want a fighting chance to have some power and food and clean water, I suggest you contact your MPs and make it clear you won't vote for their party unless they have comprehensive and detailed plans for mitigation on these matters to protect the UK population as much as possible and that this is their top policy priority in their manifesto for the general election.

Otherwise, saying you are "scared" is pointless.

At the very least support morally or otherwise Just Stop Oil and the variants who are prepared to go to prison to sound the alarm. They totally get it.

Also, with my physicist hat on, we do need to be a tad careful when comparing data collected in the past 20 years or so to data collected prior to this.

In the past (I remember doing this as a student) a willing volunteer schlepped out in the rain to the stevenson screen, a louvered wooden box on legs, sat out in the open, read the thermometers manually, which had very fine graduations that were difficult to read without a special viewer that not many had fitted and record it in a book. Some volunteers were more invested than others.

In the past 20 years or so this method has been replaced by automatic, electronic detectors that are of much higher accuracy, read remotely, these are oftem fitted to the sides of buildings, which reflect and retain a certain ammount of heat.

The thing is, we are fucked but we can honestly change HOW fucked we all are. Any changes now or soon will bring down the overall rise in temperature.

And contrary to popular belief, we as consumers have huge power.

The changes that will be the most impactful are:

• reducing or stopping car use, swapping to electric.
• swapping from gas to renewable electricity to heat our homes.
• eating less meat, using less, buying less.
• pressuring local government to act through our votes / writing to MPs and adding voices to global campaigns.

These are much more impactful than not taking the odd flight.

So for example in @nodogz list - having one small engine car and heating home through fossil fuels she is still doing - which is going to still be contributing the most to emmissions. It’s better to either have a car that is only occasionally used, or not at all, and put solar panels up / pumps and ditch all the rest - much bigger impact.

It's incredibly frustrating when I see threads like this now, as though people have only just realised the dangers. I remember being worried about this shit while I was in school, in the 90s.

Yes, it will make a small direct difference.

It will show that there is political will to start making policies that are environmentally centred (remember how policies are usually incremental - look at the history of workers rights)

And it would help break the mindset that because we can't solve it ourselves, then it's OK to do nothing

I am not pretending that this is a solution. I am suggesting steps that take us in a better direction

That’s actually not true. The temperature rise can be moderated by actions now.
Read the science!

Really? 😂

What can we do ? What can I do personally?

I recycle and reuse as much as possible, I don’t own a car (never have) , have never been abroad. But I do have a large family. What else can I do as an individual that would help and what can I teach my dc to do that will also help ?

I keep hearing people say in rl well there’s no point as all these big countries are polluting so much but surely individuals can make a difference but i don’t know what more I should/could do ?

This is not how climatologists make their models. They are looking at complex data discernable from the structure of soils, rocks, ice, oceans etc over many thousands of years. They are not making inferences based on rain measurements or whatever since the industrial revolution or with primitive equipment before that. Such comparisons are just what is reported for comparison in mainstream news articles because it is easier for non-scientists to understand.

What can we do ? What can I do personally?

See my previous posts.