Can we talk about the elephant in the room?

[NeptunaOfTheMermaidBattleSquadron]

I feel like as a society we need to start talking about the elephant in the room when it comes to climate change.

All these green measures being put on individuals are surely being wiped out because of all the bombing. Everywhere. All this war and conflict. No one is looking at the impact on the climate. Everything we're doing seems so trivial and pointless because in the same breath we're sending weapons (often called international aid) thousands of miles.

Then there's the manufacturing for it. The weapons testing. All the jet fuel to send the RAF USAF etc all around the world on bombing sprees. The supplies we're sending all over the place, weapons, medicine, rations... it's mind-boggling to think of the sheer scale of this.

And while we're acknowledging and working on fast fashion, home heating, electricity generation, over use of plastics, overpopulation, traceability etc, we're not even talking about or questioning all these bombs exploding everywhere!

We typically think of MAD as nuclear apocalypse, but surely people refusing to actually engage with each other to the point of forcing the world into something with the carbon footprint of a war (never mind several of them) is the climate change version of MAD. We can't reverse it.

I feel like politicians and diplomats just aren't trying hard enough with this because war is so profitable.

Why aren't just stop oil and all those other activists out there trying to protest the most avoidable thing we're doing with the biggest carbon footprint and pressuring governments to go back to diplomacy instead of treating their people as expendable?

IDK what the answer is but we seriously need to get a handle on this and stop using bombs to make points (they're not very good at it anyway) because of this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68110310

Sorry I just needed a bit of a rant. AIBU that they need to try harder to avoid armed conflicts and solve things like adults for the sake of the planet because the stakes are so much higher than one territory or issue? I haven't had much sleep this week so please explain why IABU if you think I am.

A male coworker said to me there is 6yrs and we are 6yrs away from climate catastrophe and he was saying this after boasting about how he got an electric car and I said well there is still a carbon footprint somewhere e.g generating electricity.

So I look forward ro 6yrs time when there isn't one and I can tell him I told u so.

India China America
these are the real polluting elephants, until we look at this my glass recycling means nada

That's my view, but I got interrogated about it earlier in the thread.

And mine

It's just annoying

No one knows exact dates of apocalypses, but what you should know that the electricity in this country comes from different sources including green renewable energy. And depending if he has access to solar at his house, his car will self powered during some of the spring and autumn and almost all of the summer. A petrol car never be powered by green energy; it only takes fossil fuels.

Just looked him up. He’s got a degree in geography and has led expeditions for climate scientists it looked like from a quick squiz. I wish I could believe him. I don’t. I believe the scientific consensus.

Look on the bright side. If half the world's human population did not exist, there would be no climate change issues. I'm all for people having fewer children, than buying into Ponzi scheme of "Year-on-Year Government growth" fuelled by an ever expanding and unsustainable human population. War, Famine, Diesease and Natural Disasters have always been the counter-balances on too many people.

I absolutely agree. The alarming rate of growth of the world population is a much bigger elephant than climate change, so is the looming prospect of another world war.

It’s not climate change (or global warming as it used to be called) that’s the problem, it’s the fact we don’t have a high enough population and by the year 2050, we will be at tipping point.

@wheo add Russia and the US too and until they all get a grip of the problem is these countries nothing is going to change. And Greta Thunberg is never going to start lecturing them is she? She just continually picks the countries who are actually doing something but they can’t do it alone. Everyone has to join in.

look up the ones you believe then see who pays them, you might be surprised. What about when they dug up many feet of ice that you see everything that’s been going on for hundreds of not more years. That debunked it as well. A group of high ups got together in the 60’s to discuss how to make more money from the masses, guess what they came up with ? Climate change. Telling you I’ve been to Alaska might give you the hint I’m very interested in it. The worst thing for the world at the moment is plastic. Oh I spent 4 months there it’s amazing you should go.

Just caught up (after some much needed sleep... and then work). I must admit I thought everyone was going to have a go at me and tell me how stupid I was for even asking the question.

I know there are a range of opinions on this thread but I really appreciate how this hasn't turned into a massive bunfight (by usual MN standards), there's been actual debate and people disagreeing without personal attacks (mostly... aside from that one person who thinks I'm a Russian spy, in which case, I'm pretty sure I'd be in jail in Russia RN as I don't think you're allowed to criticise or question their "special operation" and I'd like to see a Russian with a northern accent 🤣).

I am a little sad that people have forgotten so quickly what MAD is though. We seriously need to never forget what happens if they press the button on us.

And there are a few posts on here that I just cannot love hard enough. Those of you who have said there are many elephants are so right. There's a great big bloody herd of them.

I will also add, blaming China is a bit unfair as while I agree their emissions dwarf ours and they should take responsibility for that, we're the ones buying the shit they're making/selling. But then, if our economy worked properly on a national level would we have to resort to that or would we be able to live within our means shopping locally? Genuinely I've got no idea.

No he doesn't have solar panels the point he was drilling into me was I should be doing it too, I csnt afford an electric car. He thinks I should somehow sacrifice something for the environment like sell my house so I can get an electric car...what the fuck noo. If he is so concerned and people need to do more why didn't he get solar panels for his car charging or better still why get a car at all all ride a bike.

I'm also a bit stunned at how much this thread grew! But hey everyone's talking about it now.

I do disagree with those saying "tell that to the people in Ukraine". Err... their country is the one getting fucked over in all the ways I described. It looks like both sides are in a massive stalemate that can either end now with some proper talks or in 2-3 years time with some proper talks and even more damage to both sides.

Wars never solve anything, they just get people into stalemates when they are running out of people and resources on both sides and have to actually start listening to each other.

I don't think it's crazy to want to cut out all the suffering and pain and skip to the bit where the people sending their populations to their deaths just stop that and sort their problems out around a table.

Some sort of UN resolution banning armed conflicts and forcing people to resolve issues like adults instead of scrapping like kids in a playground would go a long way.

100%

We wouldn't need to manufacture so much stuff if there were less people to consume things like, there would be far less waste

The real elephant in the room regards climate change is a MASSIVE overpopulation of the planet. Compared to even a hundred years ago medicine is more effective, we are living much longer, fewer childbirth deaths etc etc
For obvious reasons nobody wants to start a discussion on dealing with that one!

This is useful post actually as I’ve thought about this a lot so I’ll try and be short. My old mindset was basically I care but what can I do? Does it really matter what I do in little old England if the millions in the BRIC countries are still pumping out fossil fuels as they are going through a growing middle class? And why do we have the right to restrict them given that the West / UK built our empire on their natural resources? So lots of moral and geopolitical questions - then I had a lightbulb moment - positive climate change behaviour is an attitude that does matter because if we all do small acts it can lead to big action and big legislative changes can happen. I was thinking in a lazy way about it all rather than an engaged way. Most positives changes are difficult and uncomfortable. Your war comment is an interesting one - I would say there comes a point where stopping human casualties today (or stopping the people who create these) through the most effective military strategies beats saving the planet tomorrow. It’s one day at a time, one action at a day. But I have learnt those little
tbings do matter to me - they align with my own values and beliefs And Contribute.

I assume you mean there is a larger footprint at the start.

But to replace conventional cars with electric cars would mean stripping the world of many of its minerals. Which is hugely environmentally destructive. It's not just about emissions.

SquashedSquashess ·

Your view on war is very naive OP. Do you let all the Ukrainian refugees know that their country just didn’t “negotiate hard enough” with Putin’s regime when it invaded their country? Would you feel comfortable telling them that they should sacrifice their culture, language and heritage to save the planet?

TOTALLY AGREE - MY IMMEDIATE REACTION TO THIS POSTING WAS A STRONG SUSPICION THAT IT IS WRITTEN BY A RUSSIAN / A RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA OPERATIVE or even an FSB algorithm bot . Russsian stooges are flooding the internet / FB / newspapers with covert propaganda : it is often heavily disguised and it is absolutely everywhere - eg on Facebook Homes For Ukraine ......., a lot of the seemingly " English "contributors are FSB propaganda handlers . No wonder Hilary Clinton lost to Trump and Marine Le Pen's vote is rocketing / Brexit etc etc

... or just by a slightly dippy hippie-mumsnet type ...Probably would have appeased Hilter and got us all to learn fluent German ( not a bad idea in itself ... given how thick Brits are )

Why are you worried about climate change? Honestly…

Some sort of UN resolution banning armed conflicts and forcing people to resolve issues like adults instead of scrapping like kids in a playground would go a long way.

Op how would the UN enforce this resolution?

Korea and China (and maybe Japan) the birth rate is falling but rather than seeing this as a good thing, the governments there are theming to persuade people to have more children.

Oh dear, I did say that my first post on this thread would be my only one - but there is something that really grates about the supercilious "Oh Wow" responses, which imply disbelief at my stupidity! I am very well read on this matter, I do understand the complexity of the science (I am a scientist). I am not misunderstanding the fundamentals, as you suggest. In a forum like this, it is only possible to set out the principal areas in a relatively simplistic way. Thus, you picked up on my example of grass-fed cattle representing a closed system - I stated that I was painting a deliberately simplistic model, for the sake of argument - yet you still thought it pertinent to point out the impact of ancillary issues of intensive farming's carbon footprint - I could choose to do the same with the massive carbon footprint and environmental damage associated with the production of renewable technology and EV production (including the massive mining programme needed to supply the basic raw materials). As for the methane product of the bovine metabolic process, which is a more powerful radiative forcing agents than CO2. Agreed - but at concentrations a couple of hundred times lower than CO2, and with an atmospheric lifespan measured in decades, rather than hundreds of years, the contribution of methane is most probably being somewhat exaggerated - and is certainly difficult to model with any accuracy.
As for CO2, there is no straightforward, linear relationship, and I would challenge you to find any place within the actual main body of the most recent IPCC report contributing evidence (not from the headline-grabbing summaries written for political purposes!) that indicates that there is! The problem is that the complex, nonlinear climatic system is being modelled in a linear way, through imposing a wide range of artificial constraints and assumptions. The supposed accuracy of climate model simulations is tested by trying to match output to past climatic variation - but this is, in turn, achieved through retrospectively 'tuning' the models to that data, which builds in a ludicrous level of circularity and ensures that the ascribed level of CO2 sensitivity of individual variables within the model is not based on actual scientific understanding, but is fudged to achieve the desired crude match. Thus, if this 'match' has been achieved through tuning the wrong variables to the wrong degree, this will have an inbuilt error that can produce huge inaccuracy to simulations of future climate, skewed towards exaggerated sensitivity to CO2, which has framed and constrained the initial modelling parameters.

My fundamental gripe is that the current context is skewed in favour of politics over science. Just as it turned out that the science was far more nuanced when it came to Covid, and the politicians certainly were not 'following the science' in a transparent and objective way, so too (only to a far greater degree, with an area of science that is arguably far more complicated) is the climatic system being misrepresented as a known quantity, in which the balance of probabilities dictates a narrow range of logical responses. Any competent scrutiny would conclude that this is a dangerously simplistic analysis of the risk landscape - and that such a limited application of the precautionary principle is likely to face untold socioeconomic fallout that could make the ostensible cure far worse than the poorly-modelled problem.

Anyway, I cannot pretend (in contrast to the 'science is settled' propaganda that is perpetuated through the media and by the political class) to have all the answers - no competent scientist would. But it is worth being aware that the balance of probability is not being accurately reflected in the headline messages that are being churned out, in order to justify some extreme policy changes that will, in turn, have potentially extreme socioeconomic consequences over very short time periods. If you really are interested in gaining a balanced insight into the actual complexity of climate science, I can recommend Dr Judith Curry's intelligent overview and framing of the principal issues   - which is reasonably accessible. Her latest book is very accessible https://anthempress.com/climate-uncertainty-and-risk-pb. And, actually, that is what it takes to even scrape the surface of the complex issues underpinning this debate (for, indeed, it should still be socially acceptable to have a debate) - a book, with many links to many scientific papers - not a quick headline-screaming post on Mumsnet!

😂😂😂