Sick of being lectured about the climate crisis

[Soulesssummer]

I try my best to leave as little carbon footprint as possible.
Married with no kids and annual dual fuel bills are under£700
1 small car, holiday overseas once every 5 years.
So why do those wealthy families with 3,4, 5 plus kids who drive SUV tanks and holiday every year multiple times.,who consume £300 plus in energy bills monthly, have the audacity and blatant cheek to lecture others on the climate crisis.

It's like they have only just twigged their excessive greed and consumption just might now mean your kids futures are ruined.
It's making me so angry.

Of course it won't work for everyone. However, we could make it appealing for so many more people than we currently do. And yes, we also need to invest in good biking, walking, and EV infrastructure. This will also make the roads and parking clearer for those who do need to use cars

My point about the Swiss system being efficient was that it starts early and runs late even from remote villages, and it’s integrated - meaning the bus arrives just at the right time to get the train or change bus etc -
it’s amazingly well coordinated. And cheap if you get the half-fare card or your employer buys you the GA ticket (train, bus and BOAT FFS all included - nationally 😍)

Both obviously depending on the situation

https://www.wanttoknow.info/globalwarmingnewsarticles

Yes! A system that's actually usable. When we talk about public transport on here, people immediately start whining that they "couldn't possibly use public transport" because they aren't thinking beyond what the current UK public transport system is, rather than thinking about what it could be like.

I've recently finished the book 'a (very) short history of llife on earth' by Henry Gee.
It was an eye opener to the issue of global warming. Up until then I believed its a 'new' problem on the planet being accelerated by humanity but then I learned that this will happen any way. The cry out to slow it down is reasonable but a bit like pissing in the wind, and may just about make our life a bit more bearable in the interim, that is between now and a few hundred thousandth years ahead when we will all burn in hell anyway as this is a recognised natural cycle of weathering at the global scale going back billions of years.

Have a holiday!

It's a pickle that's for sure, big tech will save the earth or we create earth 2.0 project

Yes, the climate changes with time, but it's the speed of human made climate change that's the problem. It's far, far faster than natural. Ecosystems don't have time to adapt.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere over past 2000 years

Completely agree with this. Until those at the top significantly address their (frankly enormous) carbon footprints, I can’t see it as anything but naked hypocrisy.

The term climate change deniers has been around since 2015.

So I assume you're talking about how people talk on line (not the use of the specific word). And I agree - no matter how crackpot the idea, no matter how great the level of good quality evidence showing the opposite - we have to see that view as just as valid. Even when it's obvious bollocks.

What the hell are you doing to use that much electricity?

I'm in a 3 bed house and ours is £150 a month

"Those at the top" (or, in other version, those n other countries, or those in other industries - or any other form of "other") may well not do anything at all unless it's coming from an absolute public requirement.

So if you want to see that happen, then yes, the importance of measures to reduce the human-made effects on the climate need to be front and centre of everything.

But as the same time - the effect of millions of little changes (a few made by millions of people) really do add up. Not necessarily the whole solution, but still a good thing in itself. And a practical reinforcement by action to all the "others" of the demand and the will for change

This, 100%. That's not to say individual acts/choices don't matter but structural charges at a national level are what will really move the dial.

Need to use planes ?

Need ?

"Need" ?

"Need ?" ?

(raises eyebrow)

I see your point, but the most efficient way of addressing this remains for those who contribute the most to make significant lifestyle changes. No private jets, second homes, heated swimming pools etc. Millions of small changes won’t touch the sides of these sorts of changes, and that’s without even considering the corporations and what they could do.

Asking the average person to forego what may be an essential for them, such as making a car journey, during a cost of living crisis, whilst continuing to take helicopters everywhere and heating a private pool (I’m looking at the PM and the royals here) is to me pretty grotesque.

It has been refreshing to read posters like @Swrigh1234 being prepared to challenge the mainstream narrative.
I am sure that I am labelled as a 'climate sceptic'. What a silly expression - I am not sceptical about the climate - I am not sceptical about carbon dioxide being a radiative forcing agent. I do dare to be sceptical that the science is settled with respect to the degree to which climatic variability is impacted on by anthropogenic causes and the degree to which that can be accurately modelled (IPCC modelled temperature increases have constantly overshot reality - fact!). The only unscientific position is to lack scepticism (if, that is, we are still operating within a framework of a hypothetico-deductive methodology, using deductive scientific reasoning!)- that provides the perfect context for totalitarian control. We are witnessing unparalleled levels of screeching propaganda whipping up climate hysteria. It is interesting to watch, although its efficacy is scarier, in my opinion, than the supposed threat! There are plenty of eminent scientists who have attempted to bring the issue back to the actual science - but this is about politics at play on a global level. The ease with which the masses are fed meaningless, unchallenged headlines by mainstream media is beyond concerning. Thus, for example, modern temperature data is presented as though it can be compared to the proxy temperature record (which is not capable of being discerned at the necessary levels of resolution)...and ridiculous pronouncements are made like the hottest global average temperature since records began (without making clear the limitations of those records, or the difficulties of producing a 'global average temperature record'). Comparisons are often made within cherry-picked timeframes, omitting periods that might be a little too inconvenient (like 1930s dust bowl America!)...
to quote Orwell's 1984..."Everything faded into mist. The past was erased. the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."

Your dh is an architect who specialises in retrofit? Or he makes new buildings use less energy when operational (whilst conveniently forgetting the embodied carbon of demolishing and rebuilding the building in the first place snd the whole life carbon considerations of the construction industry as a whole?) Also I work in this industry too and with both architects and sustainability consultants and engineers.... as much as your husband might claim its all him (architects are often the ones with the biggest egos), he is not the expert at making the building more sustainable and he is not the person who really "makes that difference". But if it makes you feel superior....
(BTW I'm not saying you're bad for having an impact by either having kids or working in the development industry- I do too- I just find the god complex of thinking that because your DH is an architect he is saving the world especially as higher policy requirements or the clients aspirations and standards are the ones driving how sustainable the building is.. not him personally LOL!!)

Ah, but the people OP is complaining about are different. More entitled to do whatever they like, by virtue of having enough money to be able to do it.
The poverty-stricken masses need to understand this, know their place, and stop moaning.

If people have family outside Europe they it would be need if they want to ever see each other again. Weekend breaks and many (not all) business trips don't need to happen though.

It's tricky. If you attempt to convey too much of the complexity, you quickly bury the facts. We are also in a situation where we are advocating for systemic change where there are very powerful people whose wealth will be impacted by that change - and some of those won't scruple about misinformation.

You accept and believe climate science in regards to radiative forcing, yet you don't think removing large quantities of a forcing agent from being inactive, while locked in the geological part of the carbon cycle, and releasing it into the atmosphere, where it is becomes active, will have impact? Why?

If you accept that carbon dioxide is a forcing agent then you surely have to accept that having more of it in the atmosphere WILL result in more energy being trapped within our atmosphere which WILL result in a warming effect.

Is your scepticism based around thinking the amount of CO2 we've put into the atmosphere isn't enough to impact the balance?

Yes!

I also think that the precautionary principle implies that there is no risk in acting to reduce carbon dioxide levels - whereas this ignores its value with respect to the fertilization effect (CFE) - thought to have significantly increased global plant productivity - in essence greening the planet and increasing crop yields. When broadleaf deciduous forests first came into existence, atmospheric CO2 was at concentrations of around 2200 ppm - around five times current levels. The ideal level for plant productivity is believed to be around 1000ppm. CO2 fertilization also increases drought resistance in plants.

When CO2 was that high there were no mammals. Insects amd amphibians only. Not sure those levels are compatible with mammalian existence, and I’m not willing to find out. Pre-industrialisation we had 800’000 years of CO2 between 180 and 280ppm. We need to be back in or around those boundaries to reflect the levels during most of human and mammalian existence.