A fable for the fuel protesters ...

[DrNick]

Are you saying that the temperature is not rising?

 

[ALFAitalia]

There is no doubt that we are responsible for climate change over the last few centuries.....anyone even doubting now is either stupid, ignorant or blindfolded! The scientific evidence is irrefutable.....google is your friend. Sure the planet has warmed up and cooled down many times before.....ice core samples can be used to prove that....however its NEVER warmed up as fast as it has done since we started pumping lots of CO into the air since the industrial revolution started in about 1760. The same ice samples also can be used to record the fast rising CO levels since then to. The biggest issue is that there are just too many of us....anyone thinking that about 8 billion of us burning fuel and creating heat and waste gases is not going to adversely affect our small planet to some degree is clearly not bright!!
HOWEVER......there is a big difference between me acknowledging the manmade climate change is real and actually wanting (or even having the means) to do anything about it. I will worry about sorting my recycling (most of which is never actually recycled and gains loads of fuel miles transporting it to the other side of the planet to be recycled/buried, dumped) and will consider a greener car when the Chinese stop building a coal fired power station every twenty minutes or so and the yanks stop driving thirsty V8s on some of the cheapest fuel in the developed world. Until big business changes or countries that don't give a toss (hello USA) start playing ball any difference me if you make will be immeasurable. Change needs to come from the top of the money tree....not from individuals and ground level.....but that wont pay share holders....so we get responsibility passed down to us. So I will by an AMG and I will fly abroad on holiday until those other things change.....lowering my quality of life when most of the rest of the world and big business don't care is wrong....and I'm not playing! And I hate EVs!

RANT OVER!

 

[st13phil]

There is no doubt that we are responsible for climate change over the last few centuries.....anyone even doubting now is either stupid, ignorant or blindfolded! The scientific evidence is irrefutable

Really? Are you honestly that unquestioning?

 

[Railwayman]

There is no doubt that we are responsible for climate change over the last few centuries.....anyone even doubting now is either stupid, ignorant or blindfolded! The scientific evidence is irrefutable.....google is your friend. Sure the planet has warmed up and cooled down many times before.....ice core samples can be used to prove that....however its NEVER warmed up as fast as it has done since we started pumping lots of CO into the air since the industrial revolution started in about 1760. The same ice samples also can be used to record the fast rising CO levels since then to. The biggest issue is that there are just too many of us....anyone thinking that about 8 billion of us burning fuel and creating heat and waste gases is not going to adversely affect our small planet to some degree is clearly not bright!!
HOWEVER......there is a big difference between me acknowledging the manmade climate change is real and actually wanting (or even having the means) to do anything about it. I will worry about sorting my recycling (most of which is never actually recycled and gains loads of fuel miles transporting it to the other side of the planet to be recycled/buried, dumped) and will consider a greener car when the Chinese stop building a coal fired power station every twenty minutes or so and the yanks stop driving thirsty V8s on some of the cheapest fuel in the developed world. Until big business changes or countries that don't give a toss (hello USA) start playing ball any difference me if you make will be immeasurable. Change needs to come from the top of the money tree....not from individuals and ground level.....but that wont pay share holders....so we get responsibility passed down to us. So I will by an AMG and I will fly abroad on holiday until those other things change.....lowering my quality of life when most of the rest of the world and big business don't care is wrong....and I'm not playing! And I hate EVs!

RANT OVER!

Looks like I'm stupid, ignorant and blind, still I have learnt that Google is my friend, Its appears to try and get your point of view across you need to throw insults these days. By the way Google is not your friend, they tell you only what they want you to hear, relieve you of your data and as much money as they can, you really need to try some critical thinking of your own.

 

[ALFAitalia]

Not as all.....lots of research went into that a while back.....as I was probably amongst the most sceptical of anyone when this all started becoming more often in the news etc. In fact I didn't really believe it (or more likely, like many, I didn't want to believe it).......but even a non scientific brain like mine cant fail to se the evidence is very difficult to argue against. I have had my mind changed.....but I have noticed that most people who deny humans are changing the climate cant have their view changed no matter how much evidence you put in front of them. One things for sure....you won't find much "evidence" from reputable sources (Facebook does not count!) that humans are not causing it. There is no point making it up if its not true.....long tern its going to inconvenience all of us and change how we live our lives and I'm sure the scientists would also rather be able to say its not happening....no gain for them. Believe what you will....don't let the facts get in the way!!!

This is quite a good read...but obviously is all made up to give the greens power over the rest of us!!!!

The Effects of Climate Change

Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Long-term effects of global climate change in the United States.

climate.nasa.gov

What Is the Evidence for Human-Caused Climate Change?

Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. Multiple studies show that 97 percent or more of climate scientists agree.

scienceexchange.caltech.edu

Climate change: evidence and causes | Royal Society

Supplementary information for the project 'Climate Change: Evidence and causes'.

royalsociety.org

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Looks like I'm stupid, ignorant and blind, still I have learnt that Google is my friend, Its appears to try and get your point of view across you need to throw insults these days. By the way Google is not your friend, they tell you only what they want you to hear, relieve you of your data and as much money as they can, you really need to try some critical thinking of your own.

So if you don't trust climate experts, and you don’t trust Google, who do you trust?

 

[ALFAitalia]

Looks like I'm stupid, ignorant and blind, still I have learnt that Google is my friend, Its appears to try and get your point of view across you need to throw insults these days. By the way Google is not your friend, they tell you only what they want you to hear, relieve you of your data and as much money as they can, you really need to try some critical thinking of your own.

Oh dear.....and the Earth is flat, COVID was a hoax and god is real. Not everything is a hoax or a conspiracy theory but believe what you wish.....but factually, as the evidence stands, you are wrong.
Just to be clear I wont ever buy an EV and don't support the climate activists in any way.....but I like to be realistic. Ill leave you guys that clearly know better to it!!!

 

[Railwayman]

So if you don't trust climate experts, and you don’t trust Google, who do you trust?

Problem is there are many respected scientists with a completely different view on these matters, climate, medicine etc who appear to be shouted down these days when science should all about free and open debate.

I try to look at all the evidence and come to my own conclusions, the problem I have with experts is that the great majority have some form of financial interest in their conclusions i.e. big pharma funding research into the effectiveness of their drugs, this should be done within a totally independent body.

There's an awful lot of money in these issues and money has a tendency to sway folks minds. Look at ivermectin, proven in recent studies to be effective against the virus we cant mention, but poo pooed by big pharma, why?, because its out of patient and and is made by the lorry load in India for pennies, packaging cost more than the drug, so no money in it, much better to use alternatives that cost mega bucks.

So who do I trust, me I guess for one

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

The climate has indeed warmed and cooled many times over in it’s existence, and that offers some hope that the impact of mankind can be corrected given enough time, as long as we don’t blindly pass a critical point of no return.

As humans we are very rapidly releasing huge amounts of carbon in the form of Carbon Dioxide from fossil fuels, and in just a few centuries we’ve reversed a process which took Mother Nature an unimaginable amount of time to produce.

I don’t support the notion of doing nothing, just because more can be done elsewhere. Change must start somewhere, and change happens when it achieves critical mass, so why can’t individuals be the thing which makes the difference? We can be.

Choosing not to make a change as an individual is a bit like saying that it’s OK to stamp on a bumble bee because plenty more bumble bees will be killed by cars, trucks and cruel children. That may be factually true but it doesn’t make it right.

It’s not OK to take another human life, even though many more lives will be lost due to war, murder or illness. I can’t imagine anyone saying that until “special operations” in Ukraine stop then there’s no harm in killing someone because one life won’t make a difference.

So if we as individuals don’t decide whether to take life or save life based upon the policies of Russia, then why would we base decisions on our personal environmental impact upon the energy policy of China? Neither should have a bearing on what we as individuals do.

This isn’t a rant at people who choose to drive a car with a V8 engine or have an overseas holiday, far from it. It is a rant at the notion that there is no point making a positive difference because others don’t. Every change starts somewhere.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

So who do I trust, me I guess for one

You can’t be an expert on every topic so you must trust the data/reports you have read. How can they be trusted, and how do you know that they are impartial and not influenced by “big pharma”?

 

[Deleted member 126251]

View attachment 126039

"But thanks for your time then you can thank me for mine. But after that's said , forget it.” Sixto Rodriguez.

Needs Quotation marks and acknowledgement.

He was hugely popular in SA & Australia when I was a teenager in South Africa. Very good movie about him called “Searching for Sugar Man”.

 

[Deleted member 126251]

Experts have lead me to believe that this old earth of ours has heated up and cooled down many times over billions of years, I seem to remember back in the 70s experts saying we were heading for an ice age, experts also said Sadam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction.

We need to be very wary of "experts", somethings are excepted as fact until proven false, have to admit I'm very sceptical of the whole climate crises mantra, what I fully support is stop dumping crap in the oceans, pumping s**t into the air and stop digging out resources from the earth when the material can be recycled first to name a few.

We have choices.

We assume climate change is a load of rubbish and do nothing and it turns out that it was actually a problem. The earth is stuffed.

Alternatively climate change might be a real thing and we should take measures to slow it down. Nothing lost (except money).

I’m undecided on climate change but would prefer the second option for the future of the planet just incase those sceintists are right.

 

[Deleted member 126251]

Excellent post. I read somewhere (can't find the link now ) that achieving IPCC world targets for the reduction in ICE road vehicles would achieve a CO2 reduction which would reduce Global tempreatures by ...... 0.0003 C ! Still, it's creating new technologies and opportunities to make money out of climate change.

I read somewhere that all transportation (air, rail etc included) in the EU amounts to ~35% of the pollution there. A drop in the ocean compared to what Inda, China et al are pumping into the air.

 

[DrNick]

Look at ivermectin, proven in recent studies to be effective against the virus we cant mention, but poo pooed by big pharma, why?, because its out of patient and and is made by the lorry load in India for pennies, packaging cost more than the drug, so no money in it, much better to use alternatives that cost mega bucks.

So who do I trust, me I guess for one

Ivermectin is ineffective against Covid. There is no argument against this. Please don't propagate false information like this.

 

[st13phil]

As humans we are very rapidly releasing huge amounts of carbon in the form of Carbon Dioxide from fossil fuels, and in just a few centuries we’ve reversed a process which took Mother Nature an unimaginable amount of time to produce.

First things first: the climate is changing, it always has and always will. The argument about anthropogenic global warming driven by CO2 emissions is the key issue. Somewhat inconveniently (for the proponents of the theory), CO2 levels were actually rather higher in the past - when the dinosaurs roamed - than they are now. Must have been all the steel they smelted, and fossil fuels they burned.

That's the trouble with things like this. We have a tiny (actually, miniscule) period of data collection, much of which is suspect in terms of its accuracy, and have then extrapolated that back in time over 10's or hundreds of millennia, using even more suspect proxies in order to conclude that the biggest single influence on Earth's climate is human activity-driven CO2 emissions, post Industrial Revolution. Is that plausible? Of course it is, but it absolutely is not a given. People lose sight of the important fact that correlation absolutely does not mean causation. But we don't have the luxury of a "control" planet, nor the hundreds or thousands of years to study it, to work out whether there truly is a causation link or not. Which leads to...

I don’t support the notion of doing nothing, just because more can be done elsewhere. Change must start somewhere, and change happens when it achieves critical mass, so why can’t individuals be the thing which makes the difference?

Nothing wrong with that so long as people understand and accept the consequences of those actions. Some actions (such as reducing the general level of pollutants) are hard to see as anything other than a Good Thing. But others (such as the unseemly rush to "net zero" to meet arbitrary deadlines) look much more like self-flagellation and also have many consequences that clearly have not been thought through.

Just a quick reminder that the very same people who are telling us that we are "close to a climate catastrophe through global warming" are the very same people who told us in the 1970's that we were about to enter a new ice age. They weren't right then, but perhaps, maybe (and btw, we're all doomed if they are but we ignore them), they're right now. Let's talk: I have a bridge for sale.

The last two years should have been a wakeup call for anyone who has the hubris to think that humankind can control natural events on our planet. We have irrefutable proof that however clever we think we are, we cannot control the spread, impact, or evolution of a virus. Yet apparently we can "arrest climate change" by eliminating CO2 emissions?

 

[Railwayman]

Ivermectin is ineffective against Covid. There is no argument against this. Please don't propagate false information like this.

Yes sir right away sir, Ill just ignore the Israeli medical studies that show some effectiveness, back to the gulag for me.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

First things first: the climate is changing, it always has and always will. The argument about anthropogenic global warming driven by CO2 emissions is the key issue. Somewhat inconveniently (for the proponents of the theory), CO2 levels were actually rather higher in the past - when the dinosaurs roamed - than they are now. Must have been all the steel they smelted, and fossil fuels they burned.

That's the trouble with things like this. We have a tiny (actually, miniscule) period of data collection, much of which is suspect in terms of its accuracy, and have then extrapolated that back in time over 10's or hundreds of millennia, using even more suspect proxies in order to conclude that the biggest single influence on Earth's climate is human activity-driven CO2 emissions, post Industrial Revolution. Is that plausible? Of course it is, but it absolutely is not a given. People lose sight of the important fact that correlation absolutely does not mean causation. But we don't have the luxury of a "control" planet, nor the hundreds or thousands of years to study it, to work out whether there truly is a causation link or not. Which leads to...

Nothing wrong with that so long as people understand and accept the consequences of those actions. Some actions (such as reducing the general level of pollutants) are hard to see as anything other than a Good Thing. But others (such as the unseemly rush to "net zero" to meet arbitrary deadlines) look much more like self-flagellation and also have many consequences that clearly have not been thought through.

Just a quick reminder that the very same people who are telling us that we are "close to a climate catastrophe through global warming" are the very same people who told us in the 1970's that we were about to enter a new ice age. They weren't right then, but perhaps, maybe (and btw, we're all doomed if they are but we ignore them), they're right now. Let's talk: I have a bridge for sale.

The last two years should have been a wakeup call for anyone who has the hubris to think that humankind can control natural events on our planet. We have irrefutable proof that however clever we think we are, we cannot control the spread, impact, or evolution of a virus. Yet apparently we can "arrest climate change" by eliminating CO2 emissions?

I agree with your sentiments.

You’ll note that I didn’t comment that CO2 levels are higher now than they have been in the past, just that we have released CO2 which took nature many many millions of years to convert into fossil fuels.

Periods of intense volcanic activity and even large meteor strikes can cause huge surges in CO2 levels, however in recent times ambient CO2 levels have been relatively low, and so the release of CO2 from fossil fuels has had a greater effect.

What’s very unfortunate - but also of our own making - is that this has coincided with large scale deforestation which of course reduces the capacity of the planet to manage CO2 levels naturally.

I couldn’t agree more with your final point, humans cannot control nature. We can influence it but we cannot control it. What humans can do though is control what we do, and for that there are no excuses.

 

[st13phil]

What humans can do though is control what we do, and for that there are no excuses.

Ahh... but is what we do good or bad? Or just irrelevant? Important questions for which there are lots of assumed answers, but more often than not a lack of good evidence. Perceived wisdom rarely trumps properly researched and thought through actions.

Something else that often gets overlooked is that humans have proven to be very adaptable in terms of making their environment tolerable. For example, there's a huge swathe of the planet that has become liveable in the last 50+ years - and is now densely populated - through the mass deployment of artificial cooling (air conditioning). That relies on generated electricity in order to work, so it doesn't take much imagination to realise that those locations can easily become unliveable again if the power stops. But we have to stop generating power (apparently) because if we don't somewhere else will become flooded. BTW, we have good solutions, tried and tested over centuries, to living in places that periodically flood: we build on stilts.

The reality is that kneejerk responses to a perceived problem will have consequences that are likely very negative and very far reaching. That isn't a reason to do nothing, but it is a reason to stop panicking, think through the complex consequences of the over-simplistic "solutions" that are so favoured by the extremists, and make sensible changes that have a strong chance of taking us in a good direction.

 

[ChrisHGTV]

First things first: the climate is changing, it always has and always will. The argument about anthropogenic global warming driven by CO2 emissions is the key issue. Somewhat inconveniently (for the proponents of the theory), CO2 levels were actually rather higher in the past - when the dinosaurs roamed - than they are now. Must have been all the steel they smelted, and fossil fuels they burned.

That's the trouble with things like this. We have a tiny (actually, miniscule) period of data collection, much of which is suspect in terms of its accuracy, and have then extrapolated that back in time over 10's or hundreds of millennia, using even more suspect proxies in order to conclude that the biggest single influence on Earth's climate is human activity-driven CO2 emissions, post Industrial Revolution. Is that plausible? Of course it is, but it absolutely is not a given. People lose sight of the important fact that correlation absolutely does not mean causation. But we don't have the luxury of a "control" planet, nor the hundreds or thousands of years to study it, to work out whether there truly is a causation link or not. Which leads to...

Nothing wrong with that so long as people understand and accept the consequences of those actions. Some actions (such as reducing the general level of pollutants) are hard to see as anything other than a Good Thing. But others (such as the unseemly rush to "net zero" to meet arbitrary deadlines) look much more like self-flagellation and also have many consequences that clearly have not been thought through.

Just a quick reminder that the very same people who are telling us that we are "close to a climate catastrophe through global warming" are the very same people who told us in the 1970's that we were about to enter a new ice age. They weren't right then, but perhaps, maybe (and btw, we're all doomed if they are but we ignore them), they're right now. Let's talk: I have a bridge for sale.

The last two years should have been a wakeup call for anyone who has the hubris to think that humankind can control natural events on our planet. We have irrefutable proof that however clever we think we are, we cannot control the spread, impact, or evolution of a virus. Yet apparently we can "arrest climate change" by eliminating CO2 emissions?

I agree with your sentiments.

You’ll note that I didn’t comment that CO2 levels are higher now than they have been in the past, just that we have released CO2 which took nature many many millions of years to convert into fossil fuels.

Periods of intense volcanic activity and even large meteor strikes can cause huge surges in CO2 levels, however in recent times ambient CO2 levels have been relatively low, and so the release of CO2 from fossil fuels has had a greater effect.

What’s very unfortunate - but also of our own making - is that this has coincided with large scale deforestation which of course reduces the capacity of the planet to manage CO2 levels naturally.

I couldn’t agree more with your final point, humans cannot control nature. We can influence it but we cannot control it. What humans can do though is control what we do, and for that there are no excuses.

I agree. I would add though that the most successful species adapt to changing environments rather than try to adapt their environment. In fact i can't think of any successful species that significantly adapts it's environment. Beavers maybe? My personal thought is that it must be more energy efficient to adapt as a species rather than try to adapt the environment on a global scale. In an extreme example - do people living near the poles try to warm themselves by manipulating the regional temperature, or do they learn to put a coat on? Not the best example but hope you can see my point!

So yes i absolutely believe we should minimise energy use, pollution etc etc but also focus efforts into how we can adapt to climate change rather than try to control it. We know climate change is coming regardless - it wasn't that long ago (geologically speaking) that we had ice sheets North of London.

 

[st13phil]

My personal thought is that it must be more energy efficient to adapt as a species rather than try to adapt the environment on a global scale. In an extreme example - do people living near the poles try to warm themselves by manipulating the regional temperature, or do they learn to put a coat on?

^ +1