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

Shrug and tell children that it’s all natural.

I’ll tell you the ice age happened. Very, very slowly. Some species became extinct but most were able to adapt or retreat to a part of the world that wasn’t under ice.

The dinosaurs, as you so wisely pointed out, did not use too much power - they were most likely wiped out by massive and immediate climate change following an asteroid collision.

If we are also bit by a large asteroid in the next hundred years or so then we’ve wasted our time worrying about climate change because we doomed anyway. But in the overwhelmingly likely case that we aren’t, I think we’ll be kicking ourselves that we’ve fucked up our only planet, because no species can adapt that quickly and well be fighting to the death over the places where life will still be possible. Fun!

Yes Britain will become one of the most sought after places on the planet due to our position as a temperate, boring (good in terms of the climate crisis) climate. There will be so much population displacement throughout the globe when many areas become totally uninhabitable, it's going to be pretty grim I'd say for our poor DC's. It's happening so quickly, that's the issue which the deniers seem so keen to ignore

The recent Chris Packham series on BBC Iplayer goes through all the big climate changes that have happened before and the reasons for them @Zebedee55

No words. Just disbelief.

Britain may be cool. It will also be under water.

It's "nature" in the sense that it's natural that once you've destroyed your home, you can't live in it anymore.

Holy shit. I had no idea there were so many climate change deniers on MN. Wow.

According to Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, these are the best placed areas to deal with the worst effects of climate change:

1. New Zealand
2. Iceland
3. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
4. Tasmania
5. Republic of Ireland

Depending on where the jet stream shifts to long term, it could be pissing rain here all the time, with constant flooding. Or just continue to get more unpredictable on a daily basis, making it very very hard to grow food.

Good luck with getting any meaningful statistics from this thread .

Yes, it will be eventually, everyone will move to the epicentre 🥺

It's an interesting question. But from our local environment, which was from 1750 - 1850, one of the most intensively industrialised/mined parts of the world, and which is now a SSSI and a protected AONB, I would put my money on the ability of the planet to recover, and also, on the ingenuity of humanity to repair the damage.

Climate change does happen naturally and humans are also affecting the climate on top of the natural cycles.

It’s sort of like climate change is a little fire and we have just dumped a barrel of petrol on it to make a massive bonfire.

The natural climate change can cause all manner of natural disasters. For example the flood in Libya wasn’t the first flood to hit the north coast of Africa as there are records of historic floods from thousands of years ago that have literally sunk cities beneath the sea- which under sea archaeologists have been excavating. Great Britain got cut off from mainland Europe by a tsunami sinking Doggerland beneath the sea. Sea levels have fallen and risen. Deserts have expanded and contracted. The western hemisphere has the El Niño cycle. Natural climate change has also caused species to go extinct- even before humans existed the fate of 97% of species was extinction at some point in time.

Human activity creating emissions has acted as an overlay on all this in the direction of making the planet warmer than it naturally should be. Trying to reverse that is really to save ourselves as there are enough species that can happily continue to exist if we end up going extinct through our own foolishness.

Yes it could be but give me floods over drought and fires any day. Of course that's like choosing between poo and vomit but at least we can hopefully develop better ways of using all that excess water to our advantage both in terms of food production and energy. I know if we're completely under water then that's a moot point but that won't happen instantly.

Hey, I'm one of the gloomiest environmental doomers you'll ever come across but I keep myself sane ish over it by trying to channel the odd positive thought.

Not with 8 billion people marching towards 10 billion by 2050 we won't. We don't stand a hope.

Not a single leader on the world stage leading by example, we're totally fooked

Very good post. 6th extinction and all that

I'm not a climate change denier, I just don't give a toss. Net Zero bollocks should be scrapped instead of delayed!

The planet will be fine.

It has survived worse than us.

But how much suffering do you want to inflict on our children, on future generations and on us for the rest of our lives?

It's just not sensible to make our home unliveable is it?

It's car up on bricks, sofa on the front lawn, taking a shit on your own lawn on steroids

Our climate has always changed. The Romans grew grapes in the north of England, which is just about possible today. The Victorians skated & held ‘frost fairs’ on the frozen solid Thames, which is completely unthinkable today. And that’s just the U.K.

Is our climate getting warmer? Yes, of course it is. Everyone can see that and to attempt to deny it would be ridiculous.

Is that evident warming solely or mainly as a result of human activity, rather than the natural cycles of the planet? And can any changes we make now affect that rate of warming in any significant way? Those are completely different questions, and ones to which I have yet to be convinced that the answers are yes & yes. So I am both sceptical and open minded on the subject.

Literally 97% of scientists globally agree that the warming is man made, what exactly would convince you?

We surely have to at least try to slow it down ?

Do you have a child/ren?

Why do you not give a toss? Are you in your senior years? Without young family? Just curious as to why you care so little

So @verdantverdure, if you and I (and millions like us) refrain from environmentally unsound misbehaviour, which I/we do strive for, where does the pressure come from in the developing world? I think most (much) of the Northern Hemisphere and the nicer temperate parts of the Southern Hemisphere are on board with you. But in between there are millions of people suddenly equipped with smartphones and facebook who have seen the life in better governed areas, and would prefer to move. That moves the goalposts, big time.

Climate change is real and man-made and thinking that delaying a ban on petrol cars until 2035 is sensible does not make me a climate-change denier.