Climate change.....it's too late to stop it, isn't it ?

[Banquosfeast]

How long have we been hearing the message to reduce CO2 emissions ? At least 30 years, (Mrs Thatcher the first UK politician to raise with subject, with her 1989 UN speech). Climate change has already happened, as is clear from weather reports from around the world. The rise in global temperatures that have already occurred, irreversible, and will get worse.

Yet, still nobody changes their personal behaviour....at all !

Just today I've witnessed, 1) someone sitting in their car, drinking a coffee.....engine running. 2) twenty people leaving a yoga class, and the room empty.....not one thinks to turn off the lights. 3) at the gym, air-conditioning blasting away....with the windows open ! 4) on the motorway, well it's the Wacky Races out there - nobody driving, as it they are trying to limit their vehicle's CO2 emissions; quite the opposite in fact.

Let's be honest, it's too late.

I agree too

JSO are not saying that we should stop using oil now, this minute. Rather they believe that no new licences/consents for oil extraction should be issued.
The argument is:

1. new licences take years to translate into production, therefore we're actually locking ourselves into oil for decades from now, I.e. at a point in time when we should have largely weaned ourselves off of it.
2. when a licence is issued it doesn't become "ours" I.e the UK's. The licence holder can sell it at market value to the highest bidder.

I'm not part of JSO but I do get frustrated when people distort the message to one of going full scale cold turkey on oil.

Sorry, reducing emissions globally is urgent, obviously. Whether that will happen in time is unclear.

How will we grow enough food without oil for our fertilisers?

How will we grow enough food when temps are too hot and water is too scarce? Many crops are already reaching the limits of their adaptive temperature range. And expanding long term droughts make this even worse.

@Middlelanehogger I think that aggressively turning off existing power sources

Nobody with an once of sense is suggesting that.

Pascal's wager here.

If we think it's too late and so do nothing, but it isn't too late, we lose everything. If we think it is too late, and so do nothing, and is too late, we win nothing. If, on the other hand isn't too late, we win everything by acting and lose everything by not acting. It's always the right choice to act.

The world governments, including our own, are too gutless for it to be anything other than too late

They need votes to do whatever though, again like being consumers we play a role, we vote.

Can you give an example of what you’d like to see implemented?

Energy policy is multi-faceted and should include considerations of

• human welfare impact (energy supply needed for food, healthcare, protection from weather etc)
• geopolitical concerns (banning exploration of North Sea oil only to become dependent on Russian oil is an own goal and has national security implications)
• environmental impact (both in terms of overall climate/weather impact and local impact such as increased smog)
• practicality (cost, reliability, infrastructure required, lifetime of plants/equipment)

Environmental impact doesn't supersede every other consideration. It's one of them, but not the only. It's not even the most obviously pressing issue (millions dying of starvation or nuclear war with Russia are just as horrible to me). It frustrates me when people turn this position into "you don't believe in Science".

@Middlelanehogger may I suggest you don't make assertions on science starting with "I believe" or "I don't believe". I get your overall point of view, and don't actually disagree, but you might like to consider your sentence structure.

(I'm throwing lots of stones in very fragile greenhouse BTW)

Mmm you are right and I'll try to think about it.

But I do think there is an aspect of "real science is very messy and individual research papers have sometimes contradictory results, sometimes people interpret them differently, I haven't read all the individual papers myself and am not a climate scientist (or electrical engineer or geopolitical expert) so I'm relying on interpretation by various people with various levels of political motivation, and after consuming all that material and chatting about it with friends and sleeping on it for a bit I've formed a belief that's going to inform my actions going forward"

and "I believe..." is just a shorter way of saying that 😅

Basically the majority don't have the full knowledge and would rather be intrigued with eg football etc

I can’t fault our government in all honesty. The U.K. has cut its CO2 emissions in half since the 1990s despite the population growing by 13m people. Our per capita emissions are incredibly low- pre car and internal combustion engine low. We are lower than the EU average, well below the OECD average and almost half the high income country average.

And yet, to give one example, we have some of the most energy inefficient housing stock in Europe. This is not just because of the age of our housing, but also is a reflection of the comparatively low levels of energy efficiency that is required of houses being built right now. Frankly it's scandaland inexcusable and it not only affects our national emissions, it also means higher bills and impacts our ability to be self-sufficient as a country (I.e. more reliance on imported energy supplies).

On the emissions this is not small beer: housing accounts for 26% of national emissions so our governments have repeatedly failed to grab low hnaging fruits that could reduce household bills and reduce our emissions.

As a country We should not be patting ourselves on the back (particularly when so much of the emissions reductions you refer to are a result of offshore our manufacturing in recent decades).

Yes we have old housing stock and I don’t contest that more could have been done but the U.K. is way ahead of its peers when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions and that is worth a pat on the back.

should not be patting ourselves on the back (particularly when so much of the emissions reductions you refer to are a result of offshore our manufacturing in recent decades).

No, our emissions reductions are NOT due to offshoring manufacturing, the total reduction % is significant regardless of whether you measure it by production or consumption.

Consumption based CO2 emissions includes the carbon footprint of the manufacture and transport of every item we import. The peak of U.K. consumption based CO2 emissions was in 2004 at 762m tonnes of CO2. This has been cut by 39% to 465m tonnes of CO2.

Production based CO2 emissions count what we manufacture, including everything we export, as well as all our domestic emissions by planes, driving, heating, electricity generation and so on. This peaked in 1973 at 660m tonnes of carbon and has been cut by 47% to 347m tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Hi @ReleasetheCrackHen aviation emissions are included in some of the studies referenced by the very excellent OWiD but they are not currently included in the current CCC reports. The CCC does recommend including these in future calculations, the same goes for shipping emissions.

Another factor to bear in mind is that much of the UK emissions reduction has come from the transition from coal fired power stations to gas. Some older coal fired power stations have been converted to run on waste to heat principles. Better than landfill I guess. Others burn wood pellets imported from Canada, in theory a net zero biofuel, but ethically dodgy.

“Hi @ReleasetheCrackHen aviation emissions are included in some of the studies referenced by the very excellent OWiD but they are not currently included in the current CCC reports. The CCC does recommend including these in future calculations, the same goes for shipping emissions.”

hello to you too @Daftasabroom
Aviation and marine emissions are included in the data graphs I posted as they are based on GCP (Global Carbon Project). The latest report is here: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/1917/2022/#section
and links to the meta data here: https://www.icos-cp.eu/science-and-impact/global-carbon-budget/2021

(I think they’ve been added since 2019 if I am recalling correctly)

“Another factor to bear in mind is that much of the UK emissions reduction has come from the transition from coal fired power stations to gas.”

Not quite. Yes a lot of the more recent reduction in emissions is due to transitioning away from coal, but we have also reduced gas and oil as well. We haven’t been transitioning from coal to gas, but from fossil fuels to green energy. From 2010 to 2020 carbon emissions from coal fell by 80%, while those from gas are down 20% and oil by just 6%. 2020 was also the first year that we generated more electricity without fossil fuels than with- some 54% of electricity generation in the UK was from low-carbon sources, including 37% from renewables and 20% from wind alone.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-29-per-cent-over-the-past-decade/

Other than energy generation, the second largest area of significant reduction in emissions has largely come from the transport sector with the better engineering of low emitting, energy efficient vehicles, boats and planes with a reduction of ~30% from 128m tonnes to 99m tonnes since 1990.

@ReleasetheCrackHen a bit of a shameless bump, but I hope our conversation may be of interest to others.

An aspect of global warming that seems to be very rarely touched on is the difference between heat, temperature and energy. What we should be really concerned about is heat and energy. Temperature is just one indicator of this but really doesn't scratch the surface of the impact of increasing heat and energy intensity.

^^ Just how hot is it likely to get? Is there a limit? Current temp increases are already outpacing our ability to adapt, what will happen if 40℃ and higher for long periods happens every summer? Especially along with increasing droughts and desertification of previously arable land.

There is no limit that humans can impose,that will not be in our power. I would like to think there will be ways of mitigating damage but I'm not hopeful.
I expect food prices will rise, and there will be more flooding and fires.

I realize we really have no control beyond serious efforts to mitigate, but I just wonder, realistically, if 50℃, 55℃ or higher hot season temps will become the norm in many countries, or if there is a natural limit.

All the droughts and fires and flooding and temperature records being broken across the world reminds me of reading dystopian novels when I was younger, smugly secure in the conviction that could never really happen.

@LuckyPeonies I don't think there is a natural limit, but I'm not a scientist. Maybe it depends on how much effort, globally, goes into reducing atmospheric carbon. It would take enormous effort to get world governments to put the planet before profit, as our culture has always operated on a financial basis.

I do know that I am worried about the future for my grandchildren.

(I know current weather isn't a reflection of global temperatures, but right now I wouldn't mind a bit of sunshine).

Yes it probably is too late. But that’s because most people are selfish and only think of themselves.

We could do without most flights. People don’t need to go abroad on holiday but they want to because they only get 2 weeks in the summer and here it’s nearly always raining. Covid taught us that most meetings and appointments can be done online or via zoom, but now that’s over they’ve gone back to face to face.

Of course, there are other things individuals and businesses could do but the reality is, a lot of people don’t care.

Years ago I watched a programme about climate change and a scientist shared the following
'Once everyone in china has a fridge the world is f*ed'

This has always stayed with me.
It scares me but in reality there's literally nothing we can do to stop the inevitable now.

All the droughts and fires and flooding and temperature records being broken across the world reminds me of reading dystopian novels when I was younger, smugly secure in the conviction that could never really happen.

I find dystopian films a bit close to the bone now. Children of Men, The Road... difficult viewing.

Likewise with nature programs - they used to be full of blood and gore when the lions ate the zebras, but now we get orangutans clinging to the remains of their habitat that we have destroyed.

Of course the climate has changed before, and will again. When I was young I thought, naively, that this would happen centuries in the future, or maybe millennia. I didn't realise that it could flip so quickly, and I never dreamt that this might occur in my lifetime.