COP21

[Max Power]

56 minutes ago, Augustus said:

I've actually read somewhere about monks cultivating grapes for wine on the slopes at what is now Port St Mary.

There were vineyards all over England, introduced by the Romans and further cultivated by monasteries, until Henry VIII had his spat. The climate was much warmer then apparently, until the little ice age.  

[A fool and his money.....]

5 hours ago, Max Power said:

Hang on wrighty, I'm not at your intelligence level, nor that of many posters on here! 

I'm not a denier but like you, I don't think we are going to stop it changing. I'm sure that we have had an effect on our environment which certainly could have been having an effect on climate, but I subscribe to the fact that we are going through a warming phase, as has been happening for millenia. The Milankovich cycle probably explains this in my opinion? 

My answer? Clean up our act and stop making such a mess, but I think we will be growing grapes on the slopes of Snaefell at some point, no matter how many electric cars and wind turbines we are conned into purchasing!

As Wrighty has pointed out it is the rate of warming that is the difference, it is much higher than anything seen before.

The trouble is that it is not us that will be growing grapes on Snaefell, it will be our children and their children, and the grapes will be about the only advantage.

You're right this sort of thing can't be reversed , not in any meaningful time frame to the human species, it can however be avoided. I know it's too late to avoid it all, but that doesn't mean we should give up and avoiding what is currently avoidable.

How would you feel if the Victorians knew that their industrial revolution was going to wreck the planet but carried on and did nothing about it anyway? Well our thoughts and actions are immeasurably better recorded than in Victorian times. How will they feel if we did nothing because it was going to cost a few quid?

[Max Power]

3 minutes ago, A fool and his money..... said:

As Wrighty has pointed out it is the rate of warming that is the difference, it is much higher than anything seen before.

The trouble is that it is not us that will be growing grapes on Snaefell, it will be our children and their children, and the grapes will be about the only advantage.

You're right this sort of thing can't be reversed , not in any meaningful time frame to the human species, it can however be avoided. I know it's too late to avoid it all, but that doesn't mean we should give up and avoiding what is currently avoidable.

How would you feel if the Victorians knew that their industrial revolution was going to wreck the planet but carried on and did nothing about it anyway? Well our thoughts and actions are immeasurably better recorded than in Victorian times. How will they feel if we did nothing because it was going to cost a few quid?

The warming has taken a sudden upturn yes, would that not happen anyway when a certain point in the Milankovitch cycle is reached? I guess we don't know what form previous warming cycles took with regard to timescales and tipping points?

As I say, it's only my opinions which really count for very little. I haven't said that we should do nothing, we actually are already doing quite a lot, but there is so little that we can do as individuals. It's government and big business who will have the biggest effect either way!

The one thing which we can do, and I have probably sacrificed more than most on here or in fact anywhere, is not to have children. That one act would have a dramatic effect on our planet and carbon output. 

[A fool and his money.....]

12 minutes ago, Max Power said:

The warming has taken a sudden upturn yes, would that not happen anyway when a certain point in the Milankovitch cycle is reached? I guess we don't know what form previous warming cycles took with regard to timescales and tipping points?

But we do, the history of the earth's warming and cooling is fairly well understood

[Lost Login]

14 minutes ago, Max Power said:

The one thing which we can do, and I have probably sacrificed more than most on here or in fact anywhere, is not to have children. That one act would have a dramatic effect on our planet and carbon output. 

To be fair to you I think that is actually one of the best things for the planet that anybody could do. You look at population growth and the fact that over time most people want better lives so they don't want to just live a basic subsistence life and long term, without something that drastically wipes out 25% of the population I do not see that the continued growth and the amount of pollution, including all the rubbish that gets discarded, is sustainable 

If I was 50 years younger I do question whether I would ever want kids for worrying about what the world would be like for them and there children in 50 or 100 years time.

I believe we should do want we can, but whether it will ever be more than a token effort I have my doubts. It might just delay matters by a generation or two.

[finlo]

1 minute ago, Lost Login said:

To be fair to you I think that is actually one of the best things for the planet that anybody could do. You look at population growth and the fact that over time most people want better lives so they don't want to just live a basic subsistence life and long term, without something that drastically wipes out 25% of the population I do not see that the continued growth and the amount of pollution, including all the rubbish that gets discarded, is sustainable 

If I was 50 years younger I do question whether I would ever want kids for worrying about what the world would be like for them and there children in 50 or 100 years time.

I believe we should do want we can, but whether it will ever be more than a token effort I have my doubts. It might just delay matters by a generation or two.

A raft of new taxes ought to sort it!

[Roger Mexico]

6 hours ago, Max Power said:

[...]I subscribe to the fact that we are going through a warming phase, as has been happening for millenia. The Milankovich cycle probably explains this in my opinion? 

It's not an opinion shared by NASA for example.  Milankovitch cycles still aren't fully understood (there are lots of different factors involved) but if anything the Earth should be becoming cooler under their influence rather than increasing in temperature.

[CallMeCurious]

47 minutes ago, finlo said:

A raft of new taxes ought to sort it!

All the young woke activists, ranting "do more, do it quicker".

"Do more what? Do what quikcer?"

"Erm..."

Heard one sound bite "All the new houses should ahve solar cells, air source heat pumps EV points... yadda yadda". How will that help affordability?

Maybe we should be building high rise bedsits with high speed intenet so they can all work from home and cut down o heating and travel. Save the planet that way. 

 

[Max Power]

1 hour ago, Roger Mexico said:

It's not an opinion shared by NASA for example.  Milankovitch cycles still aren't fully understood (there are lots of different factors involved) but if anything the Earth should be becoming cooler under their influence rather than increasing in temperature.

Thanks for the link Roger. 

Another scientific site which I saw and can't find now, seemed to say that we were entering a warming phase of the cycle? I would guess that NASA would be pretty reliable though.

[finlo]

11 minutes ago, Max Power said:

Thanks for the link Roger. 

Another scientific site which I saw and can't find now, seemed to say that we were entering a warming phase of the cycle? I would guess that NASA would be pretty reliable though.

Well they do claim to have been to the moon!

[Roger Mexico]

26 minutes ago, Max Power said:

Another scientific site which I saw and can't find now, seemed to say that we were entering a warming phase of the cycle? I would guess that NASA would be pretty reliable though.

I think cooling was pretty much the standard interpretation when people started working on the topic in the 60s and 70s (before that the computing power didn't exist).  That's why you sometimes see climate change deniers go on about "But they used to tell us it would get colder".  Of course it also depends which cycle you are looking at, the astronomical factors that cause them may have a variety of different effects at a particular time - you need to look at what they do combined.

[James Blonde]

The woke money is going on trying to 'stop' climate change. 

 

The sensible money is going on mitigating a changing climate... bigger drains, more robust buildings and infrastructure.

[James Blonde]

1 hour ago, Max Power said:

Thanks for the link Roger. 

Another scientific site which I saw and can't find now, seemed to say that we were entering a warming phase of the cycle? I would guess that NASA would be pretty reliable though.

Hmm scientific models failing to bear any resemblance to the real world... that seems familiar! 

[CallMeCurious]

9 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

I think cooling was pretty much the standard interpretation when people started working on the topic in the 60s and 70s (before that the computing power didn't exist).  That's why you sometimes see climate change deniers go on about "But they used to tell us it would get colder".  Of course it also depends which cycle you are looking at, the astronomical factors that cause them may have a variety of different effects at a particular time - you need to look at what they do combined.

And thermometers in the 1900's were way more accurate than we realised when they could measure temperatures across the world as well as NASA satelittes I guess.

After all it's not as if the margin of error on a mercury thermometer could be a degree or two.

[CallMeCurious]

7 hours ago, James Blonde said:

The woke money is going on trying to 'stop' climate change. 

 

The sensible money is going on mitigating a changing climate... bigger drains, more robust buildings and infrastructure.

The really sensible money is going to be buying land away from flood zones, moving away from dense urban environments and quietly moving toward solid hydrogen tech.

None of the COP mob answer the final question ~ what if all our efforts fail to stop climate changing? What if net zero blah blah blah doesn't work? We all just give up and die?

Or we do as we did during the last war and adapt to what is. 

My suspicion is we'll end up with 'environmental austerity' where the great and the good will carry on pretty much as normal and all the plebs will be taxed and banned 'for the environment'. The beauty with this is there will never be a stable environment and taxes never go away.

So even if we stop using all carbon fuel tomorrow, there will be a per mile travelled tax, a meat tax, a battery recylcing tax, a nuclear waste tax..