It's getting hot in here!

[BFTD]

Wow, this is genuinely appropriate for once.

[Newbornbairn]

Some of the muppets on this thread were meat and drink to this guy. They virtually repeat his spin and distortions verbatim.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62225696

[Todd_is_God]

12 minutes ago, 101 said:

To be clear, you genuinely think temperatures "significantly hotter" than what we had last week will be the norm in the UK over the next 10 years?

No chance.

[101]

5 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

To be clear, you genuinely think temperatures "significantly hotter" than what we had last week will be the norm in the UK over the next 10 years?

No chance.

45 could be achieved in 10 years and that's ignoring longer drier weather higher than normal summer temperatures will have and are already impacting food security like the potato crop, our yearly average temperature will climb over the next 10 years and who knows what impact that will have, but I doubt it's anything very good.

[Todd_is_God]

1 minute ago, 101 said:

45 could be achieved in 10 years and that's ignoring longer drier weather higher than normal summer temperatures will have and are already impacting food security like the potato crop, our yearly average temperature will climb over the next 10 years and who knows what impact that will have, but I doubt it's anything very good.

I think you are a mile out tbh.

That said, at least by nominating a timeframe of 10 years we can return in 2033 to acknowledge which one of us was correct.

[Satoshi]

3 hours ago, Newbornbairn said:

Some of the muppets on this thread were meat and drink to this guy. They virtually repeat his spin and distortions verbatim.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62225696

Correct (and it's an excellent documentary series).

Also an interesting harbinger of the events to come, governments and interest groups realise that saying something a lot is much more effective than boring facts.

Hence get Brexit done, war on woke, MAGA, drain the swamp, coalition of chaos etc. Etc.

Bit sad really, always stand up for facts and evidence even if it goes against your personal views (or even better, change your views).

And listen to experts, I have no idea about the climate of the vaccine - other than I totally trust those whose job it is to research such things.

One hopeful thing I did see recently was a pub landlord who campaigned against the smoking ban decades ago, only to say later he was totally wrong and actually the smoking ban was an excellent policy for a number of reasons.

 

[Bairnardo]

Last week I was on holiday in Spain. For y out of 7 days the temperature got no hotter than about 31 at its peak.

Then on my last day, I was stood in a queue in no shade and was thinking, this is grim as f**k. I dont like it. An hour later, me the wife and the kids who had been in the pool all week had no energy for any of that and elected to retire for a sleep.

I checked the next day out of interest and that day had hit 40. Absolutely boots f**k out you that heat. No desire to ever be in 40 degree heat again. Its a totally different animal.

[jamamafegan]

Very, very sad to see climate change deniers on P&B. I wonder of Todd was one of the wallopers hounding weather forecasters?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62323048

[jamamafegan]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62322574

Sea-level rise is accelerating. Nothing to do with climate change, it's a normal global process!!!

[101]

6 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

Very, very sad to see climate change deniers on P&B. I wonder of Todd was one of the wallopers hounding weather forecasters?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62323048

Imagine being so wound up by the weather report you have to abuse the forecasters and then have the cheek to call someone else a "snowflake" irony is dead.

[vikingTON]

48 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62322574

Sea-level rise is accelerating. Nothing to do with climate change, it's a normal global process!!!

Climate change is itself an absolutely "normal global process". Human activity is undoubtedly accelerating and altering that cycle of change, but there is not and never has been a stable climactic optimum even just in the tiny amount of time that human species have existed on the planet. That's just a fantasy of the green cultists: wicked humanity v pure and perfect 'Nature'. 

 

[Stellaboz]

Never before though has a species affected the climate as much as we have in the past century or so. To deny that is sheer stupidity. 

 

[Newbornbairn]

22 minutes ago, virginton said:

Climate change is itself an absolutely "normal global process". Human activity is undoubtedly accelerating and altering that cycle of change, but there is not and never has been a stable climactic optimum even just in the tiny amount of time that human species have existed on the planet. That's just a fantasy of the green cultists: wicked humanity v pure and perfect 'Nature'. 

 

Not sure about that -

 

 

We're actually in a period of unusually stable temperatures which has been argued allowed civilisation to start. Previously, temperatures fluctuated so much agriculture would have been impossible.

 

https://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9894234/climate-change-explained

[vikingTON]

5 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

Never before though has a species affected the climate as much as we have in the past century or so. To deny that is sheer stupidity. 

No, that's just not true. If it weren't for microscopic archaea, planktons and later land-based plants, we wouldn't even have a breathable atmosphere or a comfortable global temperature at all. The rapid and unchecked growth of various plant and archaea species have been implicated in some of Earth's greatest climactic shifts: including the Devonian and Permian mass extinction events:

https://www.britannica.com/science/Devonian-extinctions

The Carboniferous and Triassic Periods meanwhile had CO2 levels estimated to be 5x higher than in the present day, and an ice-free climate even at both poles. Life on Earth first maintained and then shifted that carbon cycle for literally hundreds of millions of years before human-like mammals even existed.

It is simply wrong to suggest that human impact on climate is unprecedented in terms of impact. It is only novel in the sense that we are conscious of what we are doing - but luckily are also conscious of how to reduce that impact. 

We also know how to mitigate the effects of the already established changes to the climate system through geoengineering. But just like with nuclear power and GM crops, this is where the green cultists' belief in the inherent goodness of Nature undermines serious action. Religious nuts do not do such compromises and the green movement of the 1960s onwards is the secular religion of our time. 

[jamamafegan]

26 minutes ago, virginton said:

Climate change is itself an absolutely "normal global process". Human activity is undoubtedly accelerating and altering that cycle of change, but there is not and never has been a stable climactic optimum even just in the tiny amount of time that human species have existed on the planet. That's just a fantasy of the green cultists: wicked humanity v pure and perfect 'Nature'. 

 

Yeah I should have said anthropogenic climate change. Depends what your definition of stable is, the earth obviously goes through it's own climatic changes that are out with our control - I don't think anyone is denying that? For example, we had the Little Ice Age a few centuries ago. I can't say I've encountered any "green cultists" in my time, only people who lament the terrible impact civilisation is having on the world today. I think that's fair enough.

[vikingTON]

20 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

Not sure about that -

We're actually in a period of unusually stable temperatures which has been argued allowed civilisation to start. Previously, temperatures fluctuated so much agriculture would have been impossible.

 

https://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9894234/climate-change-explained

The most recent evidence points to the opposite conclusion. It was in fact dramatic climactic shifts in the very recent past - the Younger Dryas cooling; the 8.2 kiloyear event; the ending of the 'green' Sahara - that either gave early agriculturalists an edge over hunting and gathering methods, or compelled hunter-gatherers to adjust their techniques to survive. 

For example, the Sahara turning from a savannah into a giant desert - within the past 6000 years or so - made the Nile River valley the crucial food resource in north-east Africa, around which sedentary life and (much later) agriculture developed in that region. Arabia was also much wetter and more fertile in human prehistory - as this changed, the Fertile Crescent became more important as a region of viable settlement. Climate change is central to the development of civilisation, as well as its crashes (including that of the medieval Norse settlement of Greenland).

For information on this I couldn't recommend highly enough the Tides of History podcast series by Patrick Wyman, who is putting together all the most recent scholarship on the prehistory of human civilisation.

Edited July 29, 2022 by vikingTON

[vikingTON]

4 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

Yeah I should have said anthropogenic climate change. Depends what your definition of stable is, the earth obviously goes through it's own climatic changes that are out with our control - I don't think anyone is denying that? For example, we had the Little Ice Age a few centuries ago. I can't say I've encountered any "green cultists" in my time, only people who lament the terrible impact civilisation is having on the world today. I think that's fair enough.

That's precisely the green cultism that obstructs any solution to the issue. 'The world today' is the product of extensive human manipulation over thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels: it is not and never has been some unblemished natural paradise that we have tarnished. Other species manipulate their environments to thrive: humans have merely been far more successful in doing so at scale.  

If we can ditch the pious claptrap about Nature being tarnished by wicked humanity then we can move straight to the ways in which further and inevitable human manipulation can mitigate the current excess harm. And in the long-term, we can regulate the Earth's climate in a far better way than anything Gaia or any of the other made-up Green goddesses ever did. 

[jamamafegan]

6 minutes ago, virginton said:

We also know how to mitigate the effects of the already established changes to the climate system through geoengineering. But just like with nuclear power and GM crops, this is where the green cultists' belief in the inherent goodness of Nature undermines serious action. 

I used to be against nuclear power, mainly because it takes about a decade to get the plants built and running and also the fear of something going terribly wrong like Chernobyl. Given the urgency of the situation we find ourselves in, I didn't think it was the answer. However if we are to build a green future then we probably should be investing in nuclear energy alongside renewables. With modern technology I'd like to think the risk of terrible nuclear accidents happening are lower. In truth, we probably should have started doing this years ago like France did.

[jamamafegan]

it is not and never has been some unblemished natural paradise that we have tarnished. 

I disagree with this, I would say that humans definitely have tarnished earth to an extent. Before us ecosystems were more harmonious. Since we arrived on the scene we have exploited the earth for all its worth. It is widely believed that the megafauna that lived alongside early humans were wiped out by said humans. The creatures of the Ice Age, also wiped out by humans. The rate of which we wiped out animals so quickly leads to the conclusion that we were hunting for the thrill as well as to survive. The cave paintings depict great battles with massive beasts which were likely stories people could share with one another, a badge of honour. We became brilliant at hunting, then started cultivating the land, then the extraction of fossil fuels…and this has had consequences for the rest of the animals we share the world with.

I think it’s unrealistic to expect us to work towards some sort of utopian world like something from Avatar but I do think we are more than capable of restoring nature on a massive scale and learning to live alongside nature better than we currently do. Ecological restoration would go a long way in fixing the climate crisis. Restoring habitats and biodiversity is part of the solution - and you have to ask why would we not want to do that? The natural world enriches all of us and the loss of biodiversity makes the world a poorer place.

[vikingTON]

13 minutes ago, jamamafegan said:

I used to be against nuclear power, mainly because it takes about a decade to get the plants built and running and also the fear of something going terribly wrong like Chernobyl. Given the urgency of the situation we find ourselves in, I didn't think it was the answer. However if we are to build a green future then we probably should be investing in nuclear energy alongside renewables. With modern technology I'd like to think the risk of terrible nuclear accidents happening are lower. In truth, we probably should have started doing this years ago like France did.

Hunterston nuclear plant is about a dozen miles south of the Clyde Riviera, which made me instinctively wary of nuclear power, but it clearly has to form part of the mix. The trade-offs between no nuclear and tolerating it are clear and Germany is finding that out the hard way this year. 

We should also continue to increase wind energy (the turbines behind Greenock have had precisely none of the negative impacts the NIMBY brigade claimed), and also look to smaller-scale hydro. Greenock was powering some of its mills using the Cut 200 years ago, yet apparently it's now impossible to use hydro power for anything unless you have Norway levels of rain/elevation or the Alps. Every stupid wee village burn in the country should be driving a generator and storing that energy locally. It does not require the approval and ownership of a multinational oil conglomerate to do this.