Incredibly sobering news: world set to warm by 2.9 - 3.4 degrees.

[chickychickyparmparm]

www.newscientist.com/article/2111263-world-is-set-to-warm-3-4c-by-2100-even-with-paris-climate-deal

:( When are we going to wake up to this? What is the UK doing?

[RoseDeGambrinus]

Goodness me, actual climate change deniers!

I've just typed out a long post and gone and accidentally deleted it aargh. So:

1. The bedrock of the scientific consensus on climate change is the IPCC report - 830 experts studying over 30,000 scientific papers. I think they might have managed to eliminate ideas like 'it's caused by the sun' along the way.
   
2. When all the countries got together in Paris last year none of them were particularly keen to lead the way, they all argued that other countries should do more than them. But no one stood up and argued that climate change wasn't happening. Because they would have looked like an idiot.
   
3. For debunking general myths people have mentioned, this is a really good website www.skepticalscience.com/ in particular this www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html
   
4. Climate change is actually happening now. Global average temperatures are going up and up and things predicted years ago like mass coral death are happening. The northern section of the Great Barrier Reef is in a terrible state. And polar ice caps are melting. We don't have to wait until the sea level is a metre higher before we work out what's going on.

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

Would you care to give some specific examples?

It's hard to be too specific without outing myself, but I used to be an employer within the pharmaceutical industry, where funding bias among supposedly independent scientists is well documented and all too easy to find

I don't necessarily see this as some kind of mass conspiracy; it's actually much simpler than that and has to do with potential corruption around money and the power it confers

I do agree about the importance of avoiding waste though, purely because it's the sensible and responsible thing to do. If such measures also happen to please the climate changers then that's absolutely fine

[RoseDeGambrinus]

Puzzled, do you dismiss all science because of your experience in the pharmaceutical industry? For example that smoking causes lung cancer? That's not a random example - there has been a very successful and deliberate strategy to create doubt about the link between fossil fuel burning and climate change, using the same tactics as the tobacco industry did.

[pennycarbonara]

Do people (i.e. deniers) really think that intrinsically conservative institutions such as the Pentagon or branches of finance such as the insurance industry would have the wool pulled over their eyes about concepts and policies that don't fit with their original underlying aims? These are not places that would be predisposed to back a mere academic junket; they have looked hard at the evidence and its sources and realised it is substantial and real.

[pennycarbonara]

It's hard to be too specific without outing myself, but I used to be an employer within the pharmaceutical industry, where funding bias among supposedly independent scientists is well documented and all too easy to find.

Yes, that is quite well known. However to say that one branch of science contains X large amount of funding related bias means that another, substantially separate branch of science (and one which, unlike pharmaceuticals, is not directly involved in marketing products for sale) therefore also contains exactly the same X large amount of funding bias is a rather unscientific logical fallacy.
The experience should be a reason to look further rather than to dismiss out of hand.
Do you assume that all areas of science are the same? What about the more unglamorous areas of theoretical physics and maths, which also receive funding, but fewer headlines outside journals?

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

Puzzled, do you dismiss all science because of your experience in the pharmaceutical industry?

No, absolutely not; as with the examples you mention, undoubtably there are also some very genuine people attempting pure research and trying, against all the difficulties, to avoid bias of any type. Unfortunately, as I've said, clear links exist between funding provided and the wishes and views of those providing it, which is precisely why it can be important to ask who paid for whatever study is being considered

Incidentally, can I also be clear that I'm not suggesting the climate isn't changing just as it always has (though exactly how much and where seem to be contentious issues). For me, the issue is more about why it's changing, and what effect humans may or may not have on this

[RoseDeGambrinus]

It's a shame this thread has got derailed as the key question in the OP is "What is the UK doing?". The answer, unfortunately is: planning to increase aviation emissions, preventing onshore wind farms from being built, issuing more licenses for offshore drilling and a general obsession with pushing through fracking whether communities like it or not. And that's on top of George Osborne's cuts to renewable energy funding and home insulation funding.

[RoseDeGambrinus]

But in mainstream science, why the climate is changing isn't in doubt. Have a look at the link I posted earlier: www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

The experience should be a reason to look further rather than to dismiss out of hand

Sorry penny, I cross posted with you ...

You're quite right that corruption in one industry is no reason to automatically suppose there's equal corruption in another, but given the very many well documented cases we've seen, it seems to me to be worth at least asking the question about funding bias ... not, as you say, to dismiss results out of hand, but simply in order to have the full facts which give greater assurance that a particular study is reputable

[pennycarbonara]

TBH with Puzzled's background, books would be more the thing. Maybe something on the history of climate science, like this: ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/climate-science-history

Whilst there is agreement on the basic principle of climate change and its causes, there is as in any field, debate - about exactly how much warming x amount of CO2 will leads to, how exactly knock on effects will work, and adjustments to variables based on what is actually observed in the world since modelling began several decades ago.

I see nothing wrong in noticing who has funded a study, but a look at the underlying principles that emerged when it was a backwater, or a cinderella science, are surely relevant to the major ideas involved.

[RoseDeGambrinus]

But there have been decades of science and study. What there hasn't been is a serious concerted effort to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. And we are actually, literally, running out of time, because it's very easy to put more CO2 in the atmosphere, and very difficult to get it out. And once the permafrost starts seriously melting and releasing its own CO2... well we really are screwed.

[Lancelottie]

Methane is more the problem than CO2 with permafrost, isn't it, Rose?

There are studies into why people prefer not to believe in climate science (wouldn't we all) which make interesting and sobering reading. One of the factors is definitely that people don't want to feel they've been 'taken in' by experts, or to trust global data rather than what they can see out of their own window.

It's really not as simple as shouting at people to 'wake up, FGS!'; we are complex little so and sos.

[RoseDeGambrinus]

Yes, methane too, I was trying to remember whether that was in the permafrost as well as the Arctic sea bed. The psychology of collective climate denial is fascinating. But I don't think future generations will look back and go "oh, isn't it fascinating how they failed to act and now we've got mass famines."

[RoseDeGambrinus]

I think there's a vicious circle between governments and populations as well. Governments don't feel pressure from popular opinion to act and I think that part of the reason people don't really believe how dangerous the situation is is that they are in a way reassured by governments' inaction. "Well if it was all that bad, we'd see the government acting on it, mobilising all our resources to keep us safe". Even if we don't trust politicians we don't think they would sleepwalk us into annihilation.

[GerundTheBehemoth]

Climate change historically and now, in cartoon graph form.

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

There are studies into why people prefer not to believe in climate science ...

Well, let's look on the bright side: at least now they study why some question things rather than believe blindly. When it was poor old Galileo's turn and he argued that actually the earth went round the sun, he was put under house arrest until he died

And yes, before anyone tells me off I realize he was the scientist and the church the persecutors, and anyway we've hopefully moved on since then ...

[RortyCrankle]

SpaceToad
I am shock at the climate change deniers here. WTAF. Ignoring scientific fact for what? So you don't feel so guilty about whatever petrol guzzler you drive!

So sorry to disappoint you but I don't own or drive a car - do you?

[claraschu]

People don't want to think about it or accept that it is happening because it is too terrifying, and we feel too helpless. The problem is overwhelming, and it feels like no one will make the necessary effort to change human behaviour, especially with the complex political forces that exist globally. Our economic system is based on a need for constant growth, which means destruction of the natural world; we seem unable to find equilibrium in any facet of our interaction with each other and with the planet.

It is easier to ignore the problem. I find I just get upset and anxious, but still don't know what to do. My solution is to hide this thread, not drive anywhere, keep my house very cold, eat plants, and try to avoid plastic.

[LuluLozenge]

The Paris Agreement was ratified this week, whether it makes a difference or not ... I don't know. Fingers HUGELY crossed for Clinton next week. Trump will throw out the agreement without a doubt.

I'm with you, clara, if you're still reading. I get upset and anxious about it too.

[LuluLozenge]

And SMH at this comment.

This planet has warmed up and cooled down by itself for hundreds of millions of years and will continue to do so, which geological evidence of previous tropical and ice age climates in this country clearly demonstrates. Why should it stop now?

Please read about manmade climate change, this point has been addressed 100000 times.

[BratFarrarsPony]

" So you don't feel so guilty about whatever petrol guzzler you drive! "

I am sorry but if you think one person in the UK driving an electric car and washing out their marmite pots can save the planet, you are sadly deluded.

[pennycarbonara]

I'm probably being emotionally obtuse here, and because I was also bewildered by the beginning of this article which I found after looking for material on psychology of denial earlier, quoting someone who said "‘I hate all that advice about “Don’t overfill the kettle, turn your thermostat down, unplug your phone charger.” I try to follow it but, every time I do one of those things, it makes me think about climate change and I feel hopeless, upset. "

but I don't quite understand why such very high levels of worry and avoidance persist over an issue that has been in the news for 30 years and people have had time to adjust to. Whereas, say, the article posted on MN today about 25% rent increases forecast for the next 5 years, I I see how that could be very scary because of not having had any time to adjust expectations or think of any plans in repsonse to that new idea.

[SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace]

Well, warming of this level has the capacity to radically alter life on earth for absolutely everyone. Rent increases could be sorted if we stopped voting in cunts every five minutes, so it doesn't induce the same kind of existential terror as a dramatically warmed climate does.

[pennycarbonara]

Maybe I'm just not equipped to understand that reaction then. I've been unemotional at funerals for people who I'd actually mourned months earlier in private when it was obvious what was coming. Feels like the same thing on a larger scale. It's a matter of rolling up your sleeves and getting on with things; not doing too much damage, accepting what you can and can't change, and being prepared as far as possible. I've spent most of my life knowing this stuff was likely to happen, (so more and longer exposure than some?) but the difference is that it's now happening a bit sooner than was originally expected.

This is sort of a side issue to the original post, but OTOH if high anxiety is actually an obstacle to people thinking about it and doing or planning more, then maybe it is important.

[SeekEveryEveryKnownHidingPlace]

We could have changed this. I don't think it was anxiety that stopped us, I think it was apathy and stupidity.