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

In the face of extinction a species does what it can, within the realms of it’s capabilities, to survive.

Humans will do the same.

And if the species can survive, it will. If it can’t, it can’t. Other species will survive and the circle of life will continue.

Does it though?

Cos we're not.

Of course we are. As a species, we are.

If the worst comes to the worst and we cannot achieve the communication and collaboration needed to find ways to survive, then as a species, we do not have the capability to continue.

A delay is sensible. Most of the EU has set 2035 as the big cut off deadline for ICE cars.

From a rural person, there needs to be a balance. We don't have much public transport. Most of it doesn't go anywhere you need to visit, especially if you have a timed appointment, so it's irrelevant to everyday life. It stops after 5.00 pm, and the routes don't prioritise the supermarket run.

For us, it takes 35-40 minutes to drive to the hospital. Double that for public transport. So no, public transport can never deliver an acceptable level of service at an affordable cost outside a metropolitan area.

Let’s face it the only way we’re going to solve this issue is by reducing the amount of us humans. There is way too many of us consuming, polluting, using energy to continuously improve our lifestyles (which is not a bad thing but too much is needed).

In planetary terms, we’re pretty much like a plague of locusts!

Single child families might be a way to go? Impossible to enforce though as we don’t want to end up with a dystopian nightmare with forced abortion, hidden children etc. Education wouldn’t work. Financial incentives for sterilisation after the first child? Still pretty unpalatable to most but I guess we need to balance it with having a planet able to sustain fewer people or none at all.

If the 8 billion people on the planet now were replaced by 4 billion and those 4 billion replaced by 2 billion and so on would it work? Obviously the figures would be out for a couple of hundred years due to age ranges of current population.

<ho hum, I have 4DC but I’ve already told them that they should only have 1DC each!>

I have one DC, and they're currently adamant that there will never be a GC.

Rishi genuinely doesn't care if the world burns, as long as his tired, fractious, entitled party of none of the talents wins the next election.

He knows that he and his family have enough wealth to insulate themselves from the very real and current (let alone future) impacts of climate change in the way ordinary people do not.

He is a nasty little man heading up a nasty little party.

Sez you @Antinori86 . I won't vote for him, but I do think he holds his beliefs straightforwardly.

I do indeed, well done.

But I agree, I think he is straightforwardly oblivious/insulated and straightforwardly nasty. No matter how mild mannered he appears.

Laist is absolutely correct. Both statements are true.

There have been many natural weather phenomenons over millions of years. However, it has only been comparitivly 'recently' that we have entered the 'goldilocks zone' where weather conditions have stabilized and enabled the human race and life to flourish. Now, human activity has caused the scales to tip again out of that stable zone.

I follow the scientific consensus as that is the rational position, but retain a healthy degree of skepticism.
What I find weird is that there is very little research into and discussion of possible benefits of climate change.

plus dont the ice cores prove that the earth was warming and cooling years before humans ?

I went to a tree talk the other day about picking species for the future. Because obviously trees don’t grow over night. I will be honest it was pretty alarming. And I am someone who is usually quite chill about the resilience of nature.

Pretty much all the native U.K. trees are goners. You can see that if you look outside. All the trees are fucked. There’s dead/dying trees all over the place, you might think it’s because it’s autumn but it’s bloody not yet! We just had the only two weeks of heat this summer and we have had an extremely mild and wet summer. It’s been perfect for trees. Yet so many are struggling from last summers heat wave and the cold frosts we had last winter.

We will have to import and replant. Problem is we don’t even know which way it’s going to go. We are assuming heat, but not necessarily. There’s a school of thought that the Gulf Stream might just collapse imminently. If that happens then it’s a mini ice age for U.K not heat!

I think the reality is we arent going to stop this accelerated climate change because the main (accellerating) offenders arent going to stop, reducing our already reducing footprint is futile.
We would be better served preparing to mitigate as best we can.
Face the reality.

“We will have to import and replant”

I’m not sure why there is this belief that humans are somehow above nature.

Where were the humans “importing and replanting” after the last ice age? Or after the asteroid hit the dinosaurs?

We will not have to import and replant. Life will find a way, as it always has done.

All species (including humans) will adapt and survive as far as possible. Some species will not be able to survive and will die out. Others will thrive and will adapt further until new species develop.

I don’t know why we think humans are exempt from this somehow.

Yep
Like to ozone layer action
And like actions and vaccines for covid

Deniers delight

An ice age would be preferential for nature. It’s kind of like a pause on the soil and the seed bank. When things warm up then it defrosts and has another chance.

Warming causes desertification. Soils literally die to a dust and the seed banks not going to survive that. Sure in U.K. we are like woo, mangoes and orange trees. But in half the world it’s going to be death zone like Saharan desert.

The earth also used to be a lot more stuck together. Things could move around a bit better. Now there’s a lot of sea. It’s unlikely we will get enough fluke survivor seeds crossing the ocean to repopulate out entire tree population. We only have 15 U.K. native tree species. So yes we will have to intervene. Because survival of the fittest and evolution is something which takes 1000s of years. Not 10s.

I don’t think humans are exempt. Even in a fucked event am sure some would survive absolutely. I would rather not have to live through a fucked event.

Regardless of what we do I don’t think we can reverse climate change. Our industry’s taking a hedge your bets approach. We can see it changing. It’s happening! We are trying to do our best to prepare for that.

But we don’t “have to intervene” do we?

As a species, we’ll do what we can to survive.

If this means we decide to import trees and this works for us, then great. The species wins.

If large areas of the planet become uninhabitable to humans, how is that any different to today? The species will adapt or die.

If humans spend all their resources arguing amongst themselves and fail to make the adaptations needed to survive, then the species will die. Just like any species that fails to adapt to a new environment.

I do think we probably do need to intervene. We are like a bus about to drive off a pier. Half the bus is arguing about which direction to drive. Hopefully they figure it out and we do t go plunging. It’s looking pretty inevitable to me so I am putting on life jackets and pre smashing some windows 🤣

Of course we need to intervene.

If we want the human species to survive in this location, we need to intervene.

But if humans can’t successfully do this as a species, then the species won’t survive.

Maybe selfishness is the flaw in the human species that means we won’t survive.

Ok, so by your own argument, if I go and stab you to death you've just died of natural causes, right?

Oh god I voted the wrong way. Bloody insomnia. Of course it’s caused by human activity.

This.

This.

I'm quite shocked that I got this far into the thread before an intelligent comment was made.