Climate Change. Too Late???

[Dennis Reynolds]

Those pesky WFH'ers using all the water. 

[ri Alban]

Good. Hopefully humans will be wiped out, soon enough. Climate, Virus, Nukes. Tick Tock.

[Ked]

3 hours ago, ri Alban said:

Good. Hopefully humans will be wiped out, soon enough. Climate, Virus, Nukes. Tick Tock.

 

[Irufushi]

8 minutes ago, Ked said:

 

😂😂😂

[Jeffros Furios]

4 hours ago, ri Alban said:

Good. Hopefully humans will be wiped out, soon enough. Climate, Virus, Nukes. Tick Tock.

Can we do carpet bombing ? 

[dobmisterdobster]

On 29/07/2022 at 16:50, Francis Albert said:

I am neither a conservative nor philosopher but am aware that good intentions don't always deliver good. An aggressive UK approach to net zero will not only have little impact on climate change (because it is global in cause and impact) but could even be counterproductive if it trashed the UK economy to the benefit of less scrupulous economies as far as climate change causes are concerned.

 

Europe's contribution towards climate change is insignificant. China is going to dig thousands of tons of coal in the next year.

[ri Alban]

Please Mother nature or Putin, wipe humans out, soon. Thanks. 

Edited August 13, 2022 by ri Alban

[ri Alban]

6 hours ago, dobmisterdobster said:

 

Europe's contribution towards climate change is insignificant. China is going to dig thousands of tons of coal in the next year.

[Ked]

5 hours ago, ri Alban said:

Please Mother nature or Putin, wipe humans out, soon. Thanks. 

Sorry but instead of a picture I shall just reiterate what a fekin idiotic comment.

[ri Alban]

Massive asteroid, come on down.  🧲 

 

 

[Tommy Brown]

5 hours ago, Ked said:

Sorry but instead of a picture I shall just reiterate what a fekin idiotic comment.

Is it really?

We are the scurge of the planet.

We don't deserve it, we totally abuse it.

Earth without us would have one seriously amazing place.

[ri Alban]

Please fate, send all you have, that only kills humans, thanks.

Edited August 14, 2022 by ri Alban

[OBE]

2 hours ago, ri Alban said:

Please fate, send all you have, that only kills humans, thanks.

 

No need to plead with fate, our pish stained leaders ♥️ a 🔳 🟢... yesterday, today & tomorrow...🙁

 

[Harry Potter]

Its never too late, electric cars not the answer(not enough working chargers)Hybrid yes.

[JFK-1]

Prepare to be invaded. I read someplace that something like 90% of all the fresh water on the island is in Scotland. Loch Lomond alone contains more fresh water than they have.

 

 

[Ulysses]

Whatever about fixing the problem, if you want the information to really understand the problem you could do worse than trawling through some of what's available at this link.

 

CO2 emissions - Our World in Data

 

Headline news?  Asia (particularly China) is now making the biggest absolute contribution to emissions, but in per capita terms the USA, the UK and the EEA are still the biggest emitters by a long way.  If you count "imported emissions" (i.e. importing stuff and letting other countries do the emitting) the gap is even bigger, because of the amount of stuff made by carbon emitters in Asia to be sold in North America and Europe.  On the other hand, it is North America and Europe that are making the most progress (little as it might be) in reducing their carbon footprints - while countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Nigeria have a lot to learn.

[ri Alban]

🙏 Asteroid, 28 days later,  The apocalypse. Wipe the humans out.

Anything will do. 

 

[ri Alban]

Save the 🌍

[Shooter McGavin]

24 minutes ago, ri Alban said:

🙏 Asteroid, 28 days later,  The apocalypse. Wipe the humans out.

Anything will do. 

 

 

You okay, pal?

[Tommy Brown]

5 hours ago, Ulysses said:

Whatever about fixing the problem, if you want the information to really understand the problem you could do worse than trawling through some of what's available at this link.

 

CO2 emissions - Our World in Data

 

Headline news?  Asia (particularly China) is now making the biggest absolute contribution to emissions, but in per capita terms the USA, the UK and the EEA are still the biggest emitters by a long way.  If you count "imported emissions" (i.e. importing stuff and letting other countries do the emitting) the gap is even bigger, because of the amount of stuff made by carbon emitters in Asia to be sold in North America and Europe.  On the other hand, it is North America and Europe that are making the most progress (little as it might be) in reducing their carbon footprints - while countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Nigeria have a lot to learn.

Great Post as always Uly.

 

Pisses me off at work, our owners pushing for more to be sourced in the China and far east markets.

Shipping cheap goods halfway round the world rather than getting from capable local or UK workshops.

[Taffin]

2 hours ago, Tommy Brown said:

Great Post as always Uly.

 

Pisses me off at work, our owners pushing for more to be sourced in the China and far east markets.

Shipping cheap goods halfway round the world rather than getting from capable local or UK workshops.

 

Absolutely. I hate the nationalist element to "buy local" and "buy British" etc but it really is the best thing. It's not because our stuff is better, it's because it's what we've got and doesn't need shipped around the world.

[Tommy Brown]

40 minutes ago, Taffin said:

 

Absolutely. I hate the nationalist element to "buy local" and "buy British" etc but it really is the best thing. It's not because our stuff is better, it's because it's what we've got and doesn't need shipped around the world.

I bottled out bringing it up with our American owners on a visit last month.

Americans pushing for Chinese sources, ridiculous. I was itching to bring up possible of Taiwan takeover. But I am a tongue tied wreck in front the whole workforce.

My boss mate might have got pissed at me too.

 

[The Gorgie]

Thank the lord for all that rain last night and today. With the talk of hosepipe bans I was getting worried how I would clean my artificial grass...

Edited August 15, 2022 by Sir Craig Gordon

[jack D and coke]

Interesting graph, if right enough. 

[CavySlaveJambo]

On 20/07/2022 at 11:26, A_A wehatethehibs said:

Sure it’s the hottest since records began but not the hottest ever. Not even the hottest in the last mere 100m years. What about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum? 12,000GT of carbon were released into the atmosphere over a 50,000 year period back then and global temperatures rose by 6 degrees c to levels of 13c higher than todays level.  

Yes and the earth was a giant snowball, twice, for millions of years in the Cryogenian. 

There are two lots of climate change on earth, man made, and natural (plate techtonics etc)

 

Also you seem to have forgotten deforestation also has a very large role to play in carbon emissions and there role in manmade carbon change. Not just the big ones - Brazil and Indonesia etc, but around the world.  

[CavySlaveJambo]

27 minutes ago, CavySlaveJambo said:

Yes and the earth was a giant snowball, twice, for millions of years in the Cryogenian. 

There are two lots of climate change on earth, man made, and natural (plate techtonics etc)

 

Also you seem to have forgotten deforestation also has a very large role to play in carbon emissions and there role in manmade carbon change. Not just the big ones - Brazil and Indonesia etc, but around the world.  

I made a mess of that post.

 

Yes, higher temperatures have been seen on earth before and it looked as though we were in a natural temperature increase around the world before the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions became apparent.  Everyone mentions the fossil fuels.  What about the melting of the permafrost and opening the stored methane and carbon dioxide beneath?  

 

Also, Carbon Sinks, namely the rainforests are being destroyed for farming. Soya, Beef and Palm Oil.  That and people are doing things with gardens.   Anyway the whole of this climate change is being tied up with human actions, around the world that do not help,  such as airmiles for food.  

 

The other issue with the current climate change cycle that human actions are accelerating, is that it is faster than any of the natural cycles.  This means along with other human actions (hunting and poaching, deforestations), it has put the world's animals into a mass extinction event over the natural extinction rate.  Scientifically species are going extinct at rates of 100-1000 times higher than the natural rate would be. 

 

 

[A_A wehatethehibs]

12 minutes ago, CavySlaveJambo said:

Yes and the earth was a giant snowball, twice, for millions of years in the Cryogenian. 

There are two lots of climate change on earth, man made, and natural (plate techtonics etc)

 

Also you seem to have forgotten deforestation also has a very large role to play in carbon emissions and there role in manmade carbon change. Not just the big ones - Brazil and Indonesia etc, but around the world.  

There’s a philosophical question in response to both of your posts.
 

What is it exactly that separates the “man made” from the “natural”?

 

Is the Genus Homo not part of nature?

 

Homo Sapiens. The end product of the evolution of mammalian life on Earth.

 

So, if I refute the arbitrary line you’ve drawn between humanity and nature, I can logically conclude that all human activity on the surface of the Earth (and beyond) is natural; it is the outcome of evolution. Human history is natural history. Just another chapter of it. 

[CavySlaveJambo]

1 hour ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

There’s a philosophical question in response to both of your posts.
 

What is it exactly that separates the “man made” from the “natural”?

 

Is the Genus Homo not part of nature?

 

Homo Sapiens. The end product of the evolution of mammalian life on Earth.

 

So the fact that it is one genus of all knospecies, known and unknown that 

[ri Alban]

[Watt-Zeefuik]

8 hours ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

There’s a philosophical question in response to both of your posts.
 

What is it exactly that separates the “man made” from the “natural”?

 

Is the Genus Homo not part of nature?

 

Homo Sapiens. The end product of the evolution of mammalian life on Earth.

 

So, if I refute the arbitrary line you’ve drawn between humanity and nature, I can logically conclude that all human activity on the surface of the Earth (and beyond) is natural; it is the outcome of evolution. Human history is natural history. Just another chapter of it. 

On the one hand, yes, absolutely, you should question any hard line between "human" and "nature." (If you really want the philosophical treatment here, "We Have Never Been Modern" by Bruno Latour will cook your noodle in good ways.)

 

On the other hand, it really doesn't matter when it comes to climate change. Whether we're "natural" or not, we're the ones cooking the planet, and we'll be the ones to die by the hundreds of millions if we don't pull back. You can piddle around with whether that's "natural" or not—previous mass extinction events certainly qualified as "natural."

[A_A wehatethehibs]

3 minutes ago, Led Tasso said:

On the one hand, yes, absolutely, you should question any hard line between "human" and "nature." (If you really want the philosophical treatment here, "We Have Never Been Modern" by Bruno Latour will cook your noodle in good ways.)

 

On the other hand, it really doesn't matter when it comes to climate change. Whether we're "natural" or not, we're the ones cooking the planet, and we'll be the ones to die by the hundreds of millions if we don't pull back. You can piddle around with whether that's "natural" or not—previous mass extinction events certainly qualified as "natural."

What we are dealing with, is not something anybody is in control of. It is a force of nature.
 

There is not some mass consciousness who is able to make the decisions. There is no God. Nobody’s at the wheel. We are all individuals, clinging on to survival. Dependent on a system that’s been built over the last mere 3-400 years.

 

We are going to encounter the ice cold, harsh, bitter reality that is demand for fossil fuels this winter. Demand that still exists, and will continue to exist going forward. What’s the reason that demand is still there? People depend on it for their survival. For everything. From the roof over your head to the food on your table. Urban life. It was all made possible by humanity’s exploitation of abundant fossil energy. It is the lifeblood of everything, it completely underpins modernity, and it’s sad that we appear to have a generation coming through that naively think we can just turn it off. That we can just press the off button on demand for fossil fuels. There is no off button. 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

11 hours ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

What we are dealing with, is not something anybody is in control of. It is a force of nature.
 

There is not some mass consciousness who is able to make the decisions. There is no God. Nobody’s at the wheel. We are all individuals, clinging on to survival. Dependent on a system that’s been built over the last mere 3-400 years.

 

We are going to encounter the ice cold, harsh, bitter reality that is demand for fossil fuels this winter. Demand that still exists, and will continue to exist going forward. What’s the reason that demand is still there? People depend on it for their survival. For everything. From the roof over your head to the food on your table. Urban life. It was all made possible by humanity’s exploitation of abundant fossil energy. It is the lifeblood of everything, it completely underpins modernity, and it’s sad that we appear to have a generation coming through that naively think we can just turn it off. That we can just press the off button on demand for fossil fuels. There is no off button. 

 

What a horribly nihilistic view! Also an empirically false one to boot. Thatcherism has eaten all of our brains, hasn't it. "There is no society," "there is no alternative," and all that.

 

**** that, there are people who make decisions about oil leases, about renewable energy investments, about tax allocations, and the rest. For a measly $360 billion that finally got past the US Congress, a significant but still relatively small part of the US budget, the country with the highest per capita emissions in the world and which often casts the technological mold for much of the rest of the world will finally slash its emissions in earnest. Some of this stuff is dead-simple. Don't let companies that harvest natural gas let it leak all over the place, particularly after they're done with a well and have abandoned it. Pay a pittance to help poor people put insulation in their homes. Put taxes on people flying from London to Paris in a private jet. There are painful cuts ahead, sure, but an enormous amount can be done just by acknowledging the problem and cutting down the most egregious leaks.

 

"Modernity" as its commonly understood is fracturing and failing anyway, no matter what happens with fossil fuels. We had science, knowledge, and prosperity long before modernity, we'll have it after it too. The establishment of modernity didn't emerge from nothing, it was done by assembling actors into a sociotechnical system over centuries. The work of building a new world of prosperity that comes after it has already started, and the next step is mostly just some pretty basic engineering. But some of it is the establishment of formal and informal institutions to help build that world, just the way institutions helped build it before. The notion that we're all just individuals acting with no coordination is patently silly.

 

There is no "off" button—we will be burning fossil fuels to some extent for centuries, just as there are still blacksmiths making horseshoes. And fossil fuels are the only way to power our society? Absolute utter ahistorical hogwash. It wasn't that long ago that London was lit with whale blubber.

[dobmisterdobster]

Developing countries in Asia and Africa will be using predominantly fossil fuels for the rest of the 21st century.

 

This virtuous luxury green movement isn't going to appeal to them.

[Francis Albert]

15 minutes ago, dobmisterdobster said:

Developing countries in Asia and Africa will be using predominantly fossil fuels for the rest of the 21st century.

 

This virtuous luxury green movement isn't going to appeal to them.

I see the Stop Oil Now "activists" are out on the M25 damaging petrol pumps and gluing themselves to forecourts. If the UK stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow it would have zero impact on the future of the planet while China India Russia the USA Germany most of Eastern Europe and as you say almost all of the second and third world are addicted to fossil fuels. In fact if the UK committed economic suicide the effect would be to increase carbon emissions as our share of the world economy shrank to  the benefit of our even less  environmentally conscientious competitors.

But hey how virtuous some of us would feel.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

46 minutes ago, Led Tasso said:

 

What a horribly nihilistic view! Also an empirically false one to boot. Thatcherism has eaten all of our brains, hasn't it. "There is no society," "there is no alternative," and all that.

 

**** that, there are people who make decisions about oil leases, about renewable energy investments, about tax allocations, and the rest. For a measly $360 billion that finally got past the US Congress, a significant but still relatively small part of the US budget, the country with the highest per capita emissions in the world and which often casts the technological mold for much of the rest of the world will finally slash its emissions in earnest. Some of this stuff is dead-simple. Don't let companies that harvest natural gas let it leak all over the place, particularly after they're done with a well and have abandoned it. Pay a pittance to help poor people put insulation in their homes. Put taxes on people flying from London to Paris in a private jet. There are painful cuts ahead, sure, but an enormous amount can be done just by acknowledging the problem and cutting down the most egregious leaks.

 

"Modernity" as its commonly understood is fracturing and failing anyway, no matter what happens with fossil fuels. We had science, knowledge, and prosperity long before modernity, we'll have it after it too. The establishment of modernity didn't emerge from nothing, it was done by assembling actors into a sociotechnical system over centuries. The work of building a new world of prosperity that comes after it has already started, and the next step is mostly just some pretty basic engineering. But some of it is the establishment of formal and informal institutions to help build that world, just the way institutions helped build it before. The notion that we're all just individuals acting with no coordination is patently silly.

 

There is no "off" button—we will be burning fossil fuels to some extent for centuries, just as there are still blacksmiths making horseshoes. And fossil fuels are the only way to power our society? Absolute utter ahistorical hogwash. It wasn't that long ago that London was lit with whale blubber.

I’ll accept that you are optimistic and Eurocentric and leave it at that. I most certainly am not optimistic and my admittedly bleak view is informed predominantly from what’s happening in the world outside Europe.
 

European countries, Japan, Korea and New Zealand, will all do a half decent job cutting carbon. The other 6-7bn people that totally dwarf us will not and that’ll be 10bn by the end of the century. Or it could face a Malthusian shock back to 1bn, in which case, great news for carbon emissions. 

Edited August 24, 2022 by A_A wehatethehibs

[Watt-Zeefuik]

3 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

I’ll accept that you are optimistic and Eurocentric and leave it at that. I most certainly am not optimistic and my admittedly bleak view is informed predominantly from what’s happening in the world outside Europe.
 

European countries, Japan, Korea and New Zealand, will all do a half decent job cutting carbon. The other 6-7bn people that totally dwarf us will not and that’ll be 10bn by the end of the century. Or it could face a Malthusian shock back to 1bn, in which case, great news for carbon emissions. 

 

I've been called many things, but rarely Eurocentric!

 

China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and other gigantic, fast-growing countries often follow technologically what the US and Europe do. In places like China and Indonesia, it's because they're doing so much manufacturing for us already, and in places like Nigeria and India it's because they often import second-hand tech from us.

 

The calculus on this has totally shifted in the last 10 years in part because of the enormous advances in wind and solar energy. It now makes no sense for developing economies to spend money building lots of coal plants when distributed solar gets electricity to areas that need it so much faster and for the same cost or cheaper. If the US auto market shifts heavily towards electric cars, as the US IRA will go a long ways towards, there will be a widespread knock-on effect around the world.

 

Also most scholars today think of Malthus as a social Darwinist crackpot. By his calculations the world never should have been able to support 2-3 billion people, much less 8. But anyway.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

11 minutes ago, Led Tasso said:

 

I've been called many things, but rarely Eurocentric!

 

China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and other gigantic, fast-growing countries often follow technologically what the US and Europe do. In places like China and Indonesia, it's because they're doing so much manufacturing for us already, and in places like Nigeria and India it's because they often import second-hand tech from us.

 

The calculus on this has totally shifted in the last 10 years in part because of the enormous advances in wind and solar energy. It now makes no sense for developing economies to spend money building lots of coal plants when distributed solar gets electricity to areas that need it so much faster and for the same cost or cheaper. If the US auto market shifts heavily towards electric cars, as the US IRA will go a long ways towards, there will be a widespread knock-on effect around the world.

 

Also most scholars today think of Malthus as a social Darwinist crackpot. By his calculations the world never should have been able to support 2-3 billion people, much less 8. But anyway.

Thats the same china whose entire low cost energy manufacturing economy is based on coal fire? Still building a coal plant per week. 
 

The same Nigeria that is the biggest oil producer in Africa? 

 

The same Indonesia that has entirely destroyed its rainforest in favour of palm oil plantations? 
 

The same America that does not have the electrical infrastructure to cope with todays demand without blackouts, let alone multiplying demand on the electrical grid by about 10? Not to mention they’ll all be swapping back to their F150s ASAP when they realise they face a $30,000 battery replacement for the Tesla truck after 8 years when the battery life starts to deteriorate. 

 

I will believe your solar revolution and requisite battery storage infrastructure when I see it happen on the ground in Africa mate. I’m sure they’ll all be buying Tesla Pickups as well. 

[Watt-Zeefuik]

4 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

Thats the same china whose entire low cost energy manufacturing economy is based on coal fire? Still building a coal plant per week. 
 

 

Yes, the same China that is has 300 GW of installed solar capacity and is the global leader in solar panel production. That one. https://www.statista.com/statistics/279504/cumulative-installed-capacity-of-solar-power-in-china/

 

4 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

The same Nigeria that is the biggest oil producer in Africa? 

 

Who are they selling that oil to? Whose companies own the fields and the refineries? Big Nigerian oil barons?

 

4 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

 

The same Indonesia that has entirely destroyed its rainforest in favour of palm oil plantations?
 

 

"Entirely" is exaggerating, there's still plenty of it left, even if it's going away far too fast. But who's buying the palm oil? What countries have switched en masse from hydrogenated vegetable oils to palm oils? All those tea cake fiends in Jakarta?

 

4 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

The same America that does not have the electrical infrastructure to cope with todays demand without blackouts, let alone multiplying demand on the electrical grid by about 10? Not to mention they’ll all be swapping back to their F150s ASAP when they realise they face a $30,000 battery replacement for the Tesla truck after 8 years when the battery life starts to deteriorate. 

 

Oh, if only someone could pass legislation to upgrade that grid. Oh wait! It just happened. (Texas is another matter entirely, as it owns and manages its own grid, quite badly.)

 

4 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

I will believe your solar revolution and requisite battery storage infrastructure when I see it happen on the ground in Africa mate. I’m sure they’ll all be buying Tesla Pickups as well. 

 

Cool, here you go. https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/616983/boom-in-small-scale-solar-installations-in-south-africa/