Does this weather change your attitude to climate change?

[Allotment123]

It seems like everyone is taking about the weather but no one is thinking about their own personal responsibility to climate change as a result, AIBU to think we are all abdicating responsibility while we can see the dramatic effects all around us? I feel sometimes like in the only one concerned

I do wonder if the weather changing actually helps people recognise the ultimate dangers, as currently the changes have been to make the UK a lot sunnier place with milder winters! Globally, we're getting lucky (for now).

I was really hopeful that after covid, taking flights for non essential purposes would cease. It's just unbelievable how people don't give a shit and fly whenever they like, drive whatever they like, consume whatever they like.☹️

It's wetter, more unpredictableable, more flash flooding. I'm in the UK at the moment and the last 2 weeks have been rubbish but I wouldn't want to go abroad to 45 degree heat. R4 were saying there will be a food shortage due to the weather in Europe, its scary how fast things are changing

Doesn’t look like it! I do often think why bother when I see what neighbours/friends get up to.
We are a drop in the ocean though compared to the big corps. People need to be supporting annoying protest groups a bit more readily I think.

You're right, OP. All these record breaking temperatures are a cause for concern. However, some people are very blase about it, especially with summer holidays. There's a thread where people seem to think 43°c beach holiday is "fine". It really does concern me about food shortages and the constant use of AC and how little action is being taken.

Climate change has always been cyclic.

We are still warming up from the last ice-age.

Chill out, peeps.

We ain't gonna chill at 43°c peep!

I take a lot of personal responsibility and think what we are facing is frightening because we’ve effed up the planet. But what also annoys me is the fact that 71% of emissions aren’t from people going about the daily grind, it’s from business. Where are their sanctions?

I struggle with the climate change question because our governments clearly don't see it as a problem, and certainly not even approaching an urgent one.

My reasoning;
The UK as a whole is about 1% of global emissions. This means that you could drop the entire island into the sea and that would be the gain.

China and India account for 37% between them (hell, Russia is 4%), so if things were really that dire then the west would have banned all imports from those countries to get that number down.
That's assuming the US hadn't already bombed their industrial areas to death in the first place...

😂

It should be waking people up but it's not, or not enough.

Some of the comments on the weather threads are depressing. People saying, oh I hope the heat wave comes here! I mean people die because of these heat waves. It's so clueless.

You’re not alone. I’m extremely concerned about climate change and have drastically altered my lifestyle as a result, as well as become an activist.

Yet all around me I see the majority of people continue with their unhindered consumption, regular unnecessary flying and car travel, voting for parties help bent on destroying the planet for short term profit, meat and dairy consumption, and worst of all, total apathy. Do people not realise the disastrous consequences of doing nothing, or are they too selfish to care?

I honestly think most people are lying when they say they’d do anything for their kids, because it’s clear they’re not even willing to make the smallest personal sacrifice to protect their children’s future.

You should see the holiday threads "put on sunscreen, drink plenty of water, it'll be fine...." Yeh, 43°c for a beach holiday is totally fine and normal 🙄

It’s July and I’ve sat with a hot water bottle and my dressing gown today, I’m in the north, it’s so worrying the temperature in Europe is raging whilst we are cold and damp surely it’s not normal.

What @Glowie said. Our own nation’s emissions are almost irrelevant. I’m not even convinced climate change is a thing. All of these predictions are based on modelling, and Covid showed us quite clearly how useful modelling was. Weather is not climate

Yeah, it's called enjoying yourself!

Not really as it’s something I’ve thought about before this

It’s just starting to happen - so more extreme weather, and more people trying to leave where they are and more social discord

Yeah what do 99% of the world’s scientists know, they’re only experts who’ve spent years studying these things.

You seem really switched on…

We need to be holding governments and industry to account. The push on reducing personal consumption only distracts from the real culprit of business.

Complaining about holidaying non-vegans switches people off and let's the billionaires get away with murder.

Disingenuity abounds…

Hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, and droughts have happened before and would again, even if humans didn’t exist. But have we intervened in nature to alter weather patterns and the global temperature? Yes we have. Weather isn’t climate but it is affected by climate and we’ve cocked up the climate system.

I don’t agree that because the UK is a lesser contributor that we shouldn’t do our best, that’s selfish thinking. Climate control is a global society issue.

I'm always intrigued how a lay person disputes proven scientific evidence, as if it wasn't rigorously researched and peer reviewed. But "hey I don't believe it" seems to constitute an academic rebuttal.

I could not agree with you more. Well said.

Yes this drives me bonkers. I have a colleague who is an expert in his own field, requiring advanced degrees and years of experience -- if any random person tried to tell him his research was wrong, he'd tell them where to go. But he feels perfectly free to say climate science is a scam. It's crazy.

I’m not disputing but am sceptical. There are any number of scientists who query these climate-change models and none of them appear to be lunatics.

The social and economic consequences of stopping to use fossil-fuels completely might turn us all into beggars. Maybe not you because you and I will probably be dead by then, but your children and grandchildren. I read somewhere recently that if Labour press on with their “clean energy” proposals there will need to be 300 wind-turbines installed a week. It’s a total fantasy

It doesn't change my opinion. But it does make me think it's probably too late to do anything about it.