AIBU not to buy in about all of this net zero/environmentalism?

[ShanCran]

Okay, so I understand the need to look after the planet and all that but just feel that the whole “net zero” agenda is being pushed too hard and too fast. Things like “clean air zones” in cities. Surely that’s just a money making exercise?

I recycle where I can, but not as religiously as most. I also travel about 20,000 miles per year in my (small) petrol car and in my 28 years on the planet have travelled approximately 175,000 air miles. Some will say that I am awful and totally unreasonable - but I suspect that many will agree that the whole concept of net zero is being pushed too hard and too fast.

After all, for all the environmentalist rhetoric that is preached by many politicians, the King, numerous celebrities and the likes - I don’t see any of them being principled enough to reduce their airmiles (often travelling by air for trivial things) or travel less generally. I doubt that the personal carbon emissions of many of such “celebrities” is far from net zero themselves.

How many people were on the planet in the last interglacial period and where did they live ?

The worlds climate has varied hugely in the past. We've had vastly different percentages of oxygen, co2, the world very hot and the world very cold.

I don't think people should worry for the earth. It will sort its own problems out and always has.The earth has been hit by giant meteorites, devastated by volcanic eruptions etc and life has always survived.

But the populations of the worlds species/the earths habitability has varied hugely in the past as well. I doubt very much that super hot/super cold earth or an earth just hit by a giant meteorite is compatible with supplying the needs of 8 billion people.

So why are China still building them then ?

If we can accept a 3C world because it is better than a 5C world, why not just scrub some of the net zero policies in the UK and save everyone some hard earned cash on their heating bills ?

Iraq, Yemen, and Libya were the last, according to my reading.

Because a juggernaut does not turn on a dime.

That graph shows that the share produced from renewables is increasing not that the amount produced from fossil fuels is decreasing. It is in fact increasing, because energy consumption in those countries is massively increasing.

The World pulled together and acted over the damage to the Ozone layer. Naysayers said it was nonsense. The World resolved that issue.
Why do you not believe the scientists now?
Are you a Trump supporting Lawrence Fox loving troglodyte generally, or just about this?

I have only reviewed the first one. Just estimates and bullshit isn't it?

The cost to implement the changes though was relatively minor.

Just replace the gas used as a refridgerant with something else. There are alternatives and at that point in time the world was a lot less developed so a lot fewer devices holding CFCs around.

It's probably the kind of difference between saying are you prepared to pay £5 a year to achieve something of global importance or are you prepared to pay £1000 per year and at the same time make some pretty extensive changes to your lifestyle ?

Fossil fuels are a lot more pervasive in society and a lot more central to the way modern society operates than CFCs.

The world is literally burning, we as a nation and globally are doing far too little, far too slowly. I think once the UK start to experience more and more of the sort of extreme weather events that much of the world already are now as a result of climate change people like you OP might start to wake up but it'll be way too late. The economy as a reason not to strive towards net zero is an absolute myth - there is so much evidence about the economic growth that would come from greater investment into net zero as well as greater energy security and lower prices for consumers if we weren't so reliant on imported gas - as a country and as individuals we would be better off if we went heavier on net zero but unfortunately many of those lobbying govt and in power have conflicts of interest..as for recycling- do you think all those huge mountains of rubbish you see documented or all the evidence about ocean pollution etc is made up? Or do you just not care?

It really is though - carrying my own bag, which took significantly more resources to create and transport (by a factor of 100s), and which requires washing (once every 6 months or so, and yes, I can put them in with other stuff, but that's still using resource - it's not resource free.

Lets try some sums.

1 old style carrier bag (exactly like the type I buy now to line my bins) weighs 7g of plastic.
1 lidl cotton bag (hilariously with plastic coated labels declaring it to be 100% cotton) weighs 150g.

The cotton bag is bulkier, so takes up more space to carry in a container. I'd estimate that in the space I can fit one cotton bag, I can fit 8 folded plastic bags. If they were in shipping packaging, compressed together I would confidently double that.

The plastic bag has half the carrying capacity of the fabric one, so I need 3 fabric for the weekly shop or 6 plastic.

The plastic bag was made in this country, the lidl bag was made in India.

So for my shopping trip previously, I would have been transporting 42g of plastic 50miles (estimate, I know where the bag factory is) - to the shop for once, and then 20 miles home with me. Those bags would then be used as bin liners, going to landfill.

Obviously if the bags came from China this would be different, although still transporting 7g only twice (to the store, and then home) is much less resource than transporting 450g to the store, then every time you go shopping

For my shopping trip now, I transport 450g of cotton 5000 miles to get to the shop, then 40 miles for every shopping trip - there and back. Then every 6 months I run them through the washing machine - which takes 6kg, so the bags take up 1/12th of a load/soap. I do that until the bags are destroyed.

So you tell me? Is it a simple sum? Is transporting a bag that weighs 21x the weight and takes up 10x the space being shipped 5000 miles before we even begin going to be made up vs. the impact of a conventional carrier bag?

How about when we add in that everyone I know still buys bags to line their bins, where previously they re-used the carrier bags? So plastic usage for most people hasn't actually changed a lot, but non-plastic bag resource has rocketed.

Or lets talk about the people who they were targeting, who would never bring their own bag - like my ex. He just buys bags for life and chucks them, just like he took normal carrier bags and chucks them - so his environmental impact, similarly higher, as the bags for life are so much thicker.

It's not simple. Just be up front about that. Neither the bags, nor people's behaviour is simple, and pretending it is is my whole problem with the whole shebang.

This is the chart which was shown to me and why I asked the same question, ThisOldThang - though I've yet to see anyone address it

And while I'm no mathematician, it doesn't appear to support the claim - based on guesswork modelling, natch - that it's all happening much faster this time

Well first of all you have not sourced this graph, so I found it for you and it actually states

"This graph combines several ice-core records from Antarctica and is modified from several sources including Evidence for Warmer Interglacials in East Antarctic Ice Cores, 2009, L.C. Sime and others. Note the shorter time scale of 450,000 years compared to the previous figure, as well as the colder temperatures, which are latitude-specific (e.g., Antartica, Alaska, Greenland) temperature changes inferred from the Antarctic ice cores (and not global averages)."

Also much of the climate change issue doe not come from overall peak temperatures, but the speed at which temperature and climatic events change, which currently out strip the ability for the worlds flora and fauna to adapt and modify to the change resulting in the possible mass extinction quicker that we have seen previously. Even Trees previously had thousands of years to physically move with change in temperatures, such as Oak (Querkus)
trees that would migrate north as warmer climates forced them to move.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/is-current-interglacial-ending/

We're coming to the end of our interglacial period anyway, so who knows what might happen between now and then.

Why on earth would you only believe in something because of what celebrities or politicians do or don't do? Sorry, but that just doesn't make any sense.

There's an AIBU thread where the issue of falling birth rates is being discussed and many people are saying that it's good for the planet. The pro-population stabilization/growth people are arguing against that simple fact, and not doing so well at it.
So I don't think the people who are sounding the alarm about falling birth rates are the same people sounding the alarm about climate change.
However, it's complicated. We do need enough young, working people to sustain the needs of retired people.

The greenhouse effect is part of climate change and the hole in the ozone layer was very real. It closed up because the CFCs which were causing it were banned.

That was debunked long ago.

https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/climate-skeptics-have-new-favorite

From one of the authors of the paper;

"I’ve seen quite a bit of misinformation crop up surrounding our paper – particularly the claim that we (humans) have nothing to worry about, with respect to climate change, since the Earth has been warmer for much of the last half-billion years. I cannot stress enough how reductive and problematic this viewpoint is. The flaw in this logic boils down to two key points:
(1) the resilience of the planet does not directly translate our own species’ ability to adapt and thrive in the face of human-caused climate change, and
(2) the impact of anthropogenic climate change is (and will continue to be) determined by the rate of change (meaning how quickly CO2 and temperature change) much more than the absolute temperatures, themselves.

…When we compare CO2 and temperature across the last half-billion years, we find a strong correlation between the two parameters, which indicates that CO2 has exerted a strong influence on global temperature not just today and in the recent past, but across the last 485 million years of Earth’s history."

You must be new to climate change debate. The science is settled, so please just face reality.
Incredible that we still see climate change denial in 2025.

It's too late to prevent life changing climate impacts but it is not too late to prevent extinction/Mad Max. The carbon literacy training is brilliant for showing what hope there still is.

From the point of view of the world our kids will one day be adults in, defeatist is as dangerous as greed. We can still make choices that determine when Weston-super-Mare is under water in 70 years or just needs to build a new beach front.

Suppose it depends on whether you still want East Anglia, New York and the Maldives to exist in 50 years.

Exactly so.

Taxing the rich would certainly help, wouldn't it.
Not sure what your argument is here. We should pretend climate change isn't happening because doing something about it is inconvenient?

I'm surprised someone with a geochemistry degree doesn't have a basic understanding of Earth's carbon cycle tbh.

Here's a graph of atmospheric CO2 over the last 800,000 years or so. You might notice some similarities with your own graph, almost as if the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere impacts global temperatures. If you then look to the far right of the graph you'll see our contribution, can you guess what's likely causing that near-vertical spike?

And yes, while Earth has previously had higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, it's never, ever been released at the rate we're releasing it. The last time atmospheric CO2 rose to 1000ppm was around 56 million years ago, and even then it took an estimated 20,000 years to get there from about 400ppm. That's considered the fastest natural increase ever recorded.
At current rates, we'll hit that concentration in around 190 years. That's one of the main issues, the rate of change is completely unprecedented, and we have no idea how Earth's systems will react.

The other major issue is that every single plant, animal, ecosystem, marine system, and food system we depend on has, for the last million years at least, evolved under conditions where atmospheric CO2 fluctuated between roughly 180 and 300ppm. We're now way outside that range and still heading up, and 190 years just isn't enough time for anything to adapt.
Let me know if you want a version that includes a source link or a graph to go with it.

But I'm sure it's all just nonsense and totally fine.

"The paperbags weigh more, so every step of their manufacture and transportation takes more resource than the old carrier bags."

How does that follow? The weight difference is insignificant anyway.

Just get the kind of reusable bags which can be wiped clean and take them with you when you shop. It's not complicated.
It's also not true that washing cotton bags once a month, once a week (or whatever) has the same environmental impact as single use plastic bags. You may have re-used them, but most people didn't. So they had to go.
So much faulty logic in this thread.

I tend to doubt all the lecturers were in accord about climate change as well. Sounds like bullshit to me.

The difference is there are more than 8 billion humans on the planet now who weren't there in those other warning periods. Is that sensible enough for you?

I think you need to learn how to read a graph. Your graph covers 485 million years. The graph that I posted covers the past 450,000 years.

Temperatures prior to 3 million years ago are irrelevant, because they pre-date the collision of the North and South American continents, which blocked the equatorial ocean circulation and resulted in a massive planet wide temperature drop and a mass extinction event.

The 450,000 years covered in the graph I posted is very much recent history in geological terms and is directly relevant in terms of our current situation. The earth, in very recent history, has experienced warmer interglacial periods than we're currently experiencing. We're currently borderline glacial/interglacial with ongoing polar icecaps and glacial ice. That is abnormal for our planet.

The Doomsday fearmongering just isn't born out by the current reality - i.e. a planet that is getting wetter and greener.

I'm my GCSE Science, back in the 1990's, we were taught that London and the majority of the UK would be underwater by now due to rising seas levels. We now have people on this thread predicting human extinction.

It's just ludicrous to be so fearful of such a small change to the planet's temperature.

And that matters because.....? They show the same trend, all those long term graphs do. You've completely missed the point. The idea that these graphs prove there is no anthropogenic climate change is what is debunked, not the graph itself. In those other warming periods, there weren't eight billion people on the planet. Nobody is arguing that there haven't been warming periods before. That doesn't mean we didn't have a role in this one, that's bad logic. It's also bad logic to assume that because one prediction in the 1990s didn't come true that means others won't either.

Gee, I wonder how such a small change in temperature has managed to melt off glaciers? You can't be serious with that line.