Climate change

[PingPowKaPowWow]

Stephen hawking says that if the polar ice caps melt (I think this means fully melt) then the resultant release of co2 would increase the climate to 250 degrees Celsius.

I am assuming this must be true. It was in his book, brief answers to the big questions, but the quote does not reference how this has been calculated, not what paper the fact is drawn from.

I had no idea that if the ice caps totally melt, the world would be entirely uninhabitable and basically dead. I feel like this needs to be more known about? It's the way he casually writes it.

Is this some other Stephen Hawkings who hasn't been dead for years or is everyone using the present tense for effect?

I’m glad it’s not just me. He’s been dead a while and everyone is talking like he wrote this last week. But then again everyone seems to be carrying on like climate change is something they only heard about over breakfast. I remember writing an essay about it at school, in 1990.

140 years ago, the lightbulb was invented. In 200 years, we cannot even imagine what technology we will have available. The world is in a dire state, but there is always cause for hope.

So it's hypocrisy to be concerned about your children's future? And people should have no voice if they've had DC?

What a load of shite.🙄

Not only that but where has the S come from on the end of Stephen Hawking ?

I agree with you to some extent. Won't say people stop having kids but people should not have more than 1 or 2 kids. Above it, governments should make it very expensive.

@PingPowKaPowWow climate change is making life difficult for billions of people on the planet and needs tackling. We can do it, we did with the hole in the Ozone layer and there are loads of folk across the world working on innovative projects to reverse it.

Don't lose hope and don't listen to Climate Change Deniers. Think global, act local and plant more trees.🌍

Hello @Harpings can I ask you a question? And absolutely no disrespect intended here, just curiosity. I'm wondering how the overall message about climate change and the dangers we face has managed to come across as 'something we can adapt to'. As someone who has known for fifty years that we are behaving in a way that is in danger of making the planet uninhabitable, and, again, as someone who moves in circles where this has been a totally known about and accepted truth, I'm aware of the fact that for a lot of people this has not been obvious but I'm a bit mystified as to how. How have the messages and information on climate change not reached you?
I'm really serious asking this question and I'm grateful for any light you can throw on it.
For instance - did your parents avoid news?
Were you not taught anything about it at school?
That kind of thing. Also how old are you if you don't mind me asking?
Thank you.

Global warming due changes in atmospheric CO2 was first predicted over 125 years ago.

Well, it's like driving a big old diesel Landrover and complaining about vehicle emissions.

If you have children you have chosen to do something which will cause MASSIVE damage to the planet. You can't then talk about climate change without sounding like an idiot.

You didn't have to have children.

You caused damage to the planet, needless damage.

So yes, it's hypocrisy to discuss climate change if you have children.

I don't particularly care. I'm willing to suffer in old age if it means people having children.

We don't need anymore. Its just people's vanity, they want a little mini-me to fuss over, they don't give a flying fuck about the environment.

The world doesn't need your ego trip.

No it isn't. It's idiocy to compare children to a car. Its also idiocy to pretend that everyone who had children had a choice. And it is utterly moronic to claim parents and grandparents are hypocrites if they discuss, protest or try to do anything about climate change.🙄

Your bitterness and nihilistic misanthropy is showing. Did you get lost on your way to the Reddit Incel forum?🤔

@heldinadream You re pretty unusual if you ve been fully aware of the dangers to the human race from climate change for 50 years.

I first became aware of what was then called Global Warming in the early 90s and that was only because i used to date a Scandinavian scientist, as far as i can remember, talk of climate change etc was something centuries away and very much debated as to its causes - it certainly wasn't main stream here in the UK with the wider population.

He was of the opinion that it was too late to alter our trajectory and he wasn't going to have children because of this, he was also an advocate of something called "Climate flip" where we go from temperate to ice age or extreme heat in just a few years.

😶nobody care if you suffer or not. Point is that at that stage you'll be surplus to requirements and if you expect to continue existing you'll need other people to be working. Those people are the kids you're telling everyone not to have.

Again, a small, short term loss, for a MASSIVE gain.

Hahaha 🤣 bye then!

Neither bitter nor an incell. Just realistic, but people aren't honest enough to say it. Much easier to fiddle about with ULEZ and Carbon Ofsetting, it helps to distract people, makes them feel less guilty.

This is wild! Someone's actually going to off herself for the sake of the climate and considers it a "small short term loss". What, you think you can come back @onefinemess ??!

Well, that's my point, I don't really feel unusual because I've always been around the environmental movement and environment scientists, but I know I am and I really want to understand better what it's been like to only just be realising what's happening, because both groups need to understand each other better and communicate better.
My dh - age 76 - has been working in the field all his life, my best friend's father was one of the original scientists who discovered the hole in the ozone, I read stuff when I was in my early 20s about acid rain and immediately joined Friends of the Earth, which had just started in 1971, etc etc. So I've been embedded in environmentalism all my adult life and the question has always been how to communicate it to people who don't know, so I am endlessly interested in the perspective of people whose life experience has not included this knowledge but are only coming to it now.

I'm not saying I understood the detail that we now have, but that I've known for 50 years that our way of life was causing huge damage and we were not attending to the necessary changes. So I want to get more understanding of the mind of someone for whom this is all new.

What are you and your crack team of childless environmentalists doing? ULEZ isn't just about Climate change, its about improving the air quality for people in cities.

Eh?

Everyone taking a trip every now and again is not an issue.

People buying all inclusive but eating what they need is not the issue.

We don't all have to live like monks. This poster is vegan which already makes a fair impact on how sustainable their lifestyle is.

If we all took what we need and we're happy with a bit less, we'd be in a much better place. Were allowed to criticise grotesque overconsumption. It's not "woke". I find that mostly really stupid people with a lack of anything clever to say use "woke" to quickly align with more idiots like them.

Another viewpoint on the lightbulb - a lightbulb could actually have a much longer lifespan but greedy capitalists imposed planned obsolescence to make sure people buy more.

For every good invention sadly the greedy fuckers at the top find a way to exploit it, us, and the planet.

We don't. We need to provide existing children with better quality of life and education, and rescue the wealth disparity in the world.

Instead of churning out more kids like it's going out of fashion we should probably fix what's broken first, and encourage immigration to level out population levels.

If there were no people living in cities then we wouldn't need to worry about the air quality there, because we wouldn't need the city in the first place.

Less children, means less need for places like cities, less pollution and a healthier planet.

I'm doing my part by not adding to the mess.