To ask for a head count as to how many mumsnetters don’t believe that climate change is caused by human activity?

[workingtowards]

There was a thread on MN many years ago, when a good proportion thought climate change was just weather/natural, so it would be interesting to know if views have changed.

YANBU: Yes human activity is causing climate change
YABU: No climate change is natural and there’s nothing we can do about it

Plastic is a bigger enviromental problem than Humans affecting the climate.
We are all ingesting microplastics, it’s killing marine life.

Why isn’t banning plastic top of the agenda?

I think mainly natural, has been happening for millions of years, ice age etc

It might be slightly aggravated by human behaviour though

I think the rapid increase is definitely caused by us but we have very little power to do anything about it ... until the right man sets to make money out of it, that's the only way we will see change.

I mean … I guess. It kind of sucks for all the other species though. How is it karma for them? It’s not some sort of divine retribution, it’s just fucking things up.

I suppose it depends weather you look at it from a moral point of view. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to avoid changing the climate by the way. I do do my bit. I recycle, no flying, walk as much as poss. ect I take it all on board.

But the ice age made certain species die out. Answer: but that was nature.
WE are 'nature' too though aren't we? We evolved here and I think we'll kill ourselves off.

Isn’t there a scientific take on this?

A consensus that’s it’s to do with humans

I thought that had been suggested

Anyway I’d say the acceleration is human related

Natural climate change at it's fastest in the last 20000 changed the temperature by about 1 degree every 1000 years. It’s been much slower for the last 10000 or so years. Until we started burning fossil fuels. Since then its risen by 1 degree in 100 years, so we've accelerated it by at least 10x - and it's only going up rather than fluctuating.

Of course, extinction is inevitable, and generally the more evolved a species is the quicker it dies out. But the mass extinction wave we’re in now isn’t natural or karma, it’s because of human activity and it’s happening way faster than ice-age led extinctions and it’s happening all over the world. We may make ourselves extinct but I think we have a better chance of surviving us than the vast majority of other species.

Yes, there is. As quoted earlier, 97% of scientists working in this area believe in man-made climate change

Does it matter if it is all or part of not due to humans? Climate change is happening and has been happening since the start of "climate".

What matters is if humans can have an effect on it, and how humans and countries can live with it. That is far more important than the Non judgemental classes beating up the developed world in praise of the "noble savage'.

Because it wasn't big enough, or long enough duration.

If we had a VEI 8 eruption (Tambora was VEI 7 I think), or a continuous process of volcanic eruption (for example Deccan Traps), it could change the climate for a much longer period. There's no guarantee this won't happen tomorrow, or maybe nothing will happen for another 100,000 years.

There is no such thing as "normal" in terms of climate. It's changed throughout the Earths history and will continue to change, on top of any effects that we may cause.

Climate has also changed "naturally", rapidly and permanently in the past due to things like meteorite strikes/asteroid impacts. It can happen pretty much instantaneously, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. But generally these events are very improbable, the chances of them happening in maybe the next 1000 years is pretty low, whereas the probability that humans may have a rapid and significant effect on climate in the next 1000 years if our activities continue is far higher.

That is far more important than the Non judgemental classes beating up the developed world in praise of the "noble savage'.

What does this mean? Please and thank you. Genuinely. I've read it 5 times and i don't understand.

Me too

@Conferenceblues yes, the thought of the amount of species we take with us (dead) makes me sad, but not us dying out. That doesn't make me sad. It probably should!

I do believe the planet will go on after us.

I think we have exacerbated climate change and we should take responsibility for that, but we didn’t create it.

I also hate the “save the planet” rhetoric. The planet will be fine, life will survive, or return. It’s humanity that needs to save itself from extinction.

Well of course if there was a massive volcanic eruption of the scale that would be disastrous. I don’t see what relevance that has to what’s being discussed now though. The year without a summer was brought up to demonstrate that extreme climate change doesn’t have to be human-driven. Well sure - but the current climate change we’re experiencing can’t be explained by natural events like volcanos, so that’s not an argument that what we’re currently going through isn’t human driven.

We can’t (or probably can’t) protect ourselves from very unlikely but possible disasters like massive volcanic activity or asteroids, but we could protect ourselves from the human-driven changes we are seeing now.

China pollutes sooooo much making stuff for the rest of the world. Everything from the microchips in our phones to the plastic tat in our Christmas stockings. It’s our pollution as much as, possibly more than, it is theirs.

We have to consume less.

I think it's natural evolution and it's the human race time to die out , like the dinosaurs. I don't think anything we do will alter the passage of nature and nor should it .
The human race is evil .

Totally agree, like what will it take for people to see it?? I completely despair, I find it so hard to comprehend the wilful obtuseness of some posters

Suggested? 97% of all scientists globally agree that the current rapid warming is human led.

We have to consume less.

Thing is I don’t think leaving Climate Change can be slowed down solely by public buy in. Many will never but in and others will only do what is easy for them. Yet many multinational corporations are out there doing what they like and making more money then ever. We don’t need cheap tat from China. We should not be importing beef from places like Brazil who are destroying the Amazon rainforest to make way for cows. It’s seems like the plan in many parts of developed world is to reduce emissions but continue living a consumerist lifestyle by raising emissions elsewhere.

Climate change isn’t the only problem we are facing we have problems with biodiversity and we are probably all being poisoned by micro plastics.

Although i agree with your first sentence i don't agree about the 'evil' bit. But then i'm not religious and don't really hold with the concept of evil as such.

We evolved here on earth just like all the other animals. We right now are a product of the earth, if you like, just as much as a tiger or a dinosaur. Ultimately will save ourselves (and fewer other species will die out as a result) or not.

I think like we need more memes that say something like

"Wild fires after record breaking heatwaves...COINCIDENCE????!!!!"

Yes climate change is man-made.

Yes it's real.

Yes it's going to fuck us all over if we don't get to Net Zero sharpish.

No, banning things that don't exist such as a "meat tax" and "compulsory car sharing" wont help any of us.

Or our children.

I think both.... it's evolution and the world has been through these cycles for millions of years, but I think we are accelerating it. You can't keep taking out of the earth and spewing the wrong stuff back into it without something giving.

Climate change is natural phenomena but we are considerably speeding our cycle up.