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Climate Change - IPCC Report

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  • ShootersHillGuru
    ShootersHillGuru Posts: 50,619
    edited August 2021
    ValleyOfTears said:
    They called it "global warming" and found that the global temperature was actually cooling!!

    So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew? 

    Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)

    Wow. A genuine climate change denier. Just what this thread needed.
  • Karim_myBagheri
    Karim_myBagheri Posts: 12,721
    So who do we cull first? 
  • Huskaris
    Huskaris Posts: 9,849
    Karim_myBagheri said:
    So who do we cull first? 
    As much as I would love it to be the case, unfortunately no one is suggesting that. 
  • Leuth
    Leuth Posts: 23,316
    Okay, so how DO we address 'overpopulation'? You're all darkly hinting at something or other but then retreating to 'it's too difficult to answer'. I don't think it IS that difficult to answer! Either you enforce lower birth rates or higher death rates. Very simple. Question is, which, and how? 
  • EveshamAddick
    EveshamAddick Posts: 7,015
    Leuth said:
    Okay, so how DO we address 'overpopulation'? You're all darkly hinting at something or other but then retreating to 'it's too difficult to answer'. I don't think it IS that difficult to answer! Either you enforce lower birth rates or higher death rates. Very simple. Question is, which, and how? 
    Getting the Catholic Church to accept contraception and abortion would be a start.
  • Huskaris
    Huskaris Posts: 9,849
    Leuth said:
    Okay, so how DO we address 'overpopulation'? You're all darkly hinting at something or other but then retreating to 'it's too difficult to answer'. I don't think it IS that difficult to answer! Either you enforce lower birth rates or higher death rates. Very simple. Question is, which, and how? 
    You don't have to "enforce" anything. Birth rates are falling, and with more education on how many people the Earth can sustain, and how we are effecting the planet, we will see that continue to fall.

    There are many, many countries where the average amount of children given birth to per woman is well below 2, it is already moving in the right direction. 

    For some people though, we can just rely on their personality to shine through to stop anyone wanting to mate with them...

    The next big step is to create a pension system that isn't a pyramid scheme and we will be sorted. I expect the ball to start rolling on that in the next 10-20 years. 
  • ShootersHillGuru
    ShootersHillGuru Posts: 50,619
    Leuth said:
    Okay, so how DO we address 'overpopulation'? You're all darkly hinting at something or other but then retreating to 'it's too difficult to answer'. I don't think it IS that difficult to answer! Either you enforce lower birth rates or higher death rates. Very simple. Question is, which, and how? 
    It’s the enforce aspect of this that’s the problem though isn’t it. For a start you’d need something the whole world agreed to which is impossible and that’s not even addressing the ethical issues. My gut feeling is that as climate change accelerates, at some point there will be famine enough somewhere to reduce the population and that’s not likely to be a one off event is it. 
  • Karim_myBagheri
    Karim_myBagheri Posts: 12,721
    Leuth said:
    Okay, so how DO we address 'overpopulation'? You're all darkly hinting at something or other but then retreating to 'it's too difficult to answer'. I don't think it IS that difficult to answer! Either you enforce lower birth rates or higher death rates. Very simple. Question is, which, and how? 
    Higher death rates. Start with Tory voters and work from there... only joking....

    I don't think there is an ethical answer to your question. 
  • EveshamAddick
    EveshamAddick Posts: 7,015
    Karim_myBagheri said:
    Leuth said:
    Okay, so how DO we address 'overpopulation'? You're all darkly hinting at something or other but then retreating to 'it's too difficult to answer'. I don't think it IS that difficult to answer! Either you enforce lower birth rates or higher death rates. Very simple. Question is, which, and how? 
    Higher death rates. Start with Tory voters and work from there... only joking....

    I don't think there is an ethical answer to your question. 
    BoJo and his mates have already introduced this - it’s called herd immunity!!
  • rananegra
    rananegra Posts: 3,689
    Stig said:
    Cloudworm said:
    blackpool72 said:
    The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. 
    But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
    I disagree with this. If you look at the Drawdown report it doesn't even mention population as an issue. Biggest contributors are food waste, electricity sources and meat and dairy consumption. Population is only a problem because of at least two of these three. More people getting electricity from coal etc and consuming meat and dairy is a problem, but population alone isn't. If we change the way we consume, while supporting third world development and life expectancy, there really are enough resources for about 10bn people.
    Flip that argument on its head and you'll get a lot closer to the truth. A few million people wasting food, eating meat and using lots of electricity would not cause a big problem on a global scale. Several billion people doing the same thing does cause a problem as we are witnessing. You cannot take the reasons out of the context of the scale with which they happen. Over population is a massive problem, it just isn't a very palatable thing for people to hear.
    A few (hundred) million wasting food, electricity etc on the scale that happens in the West, it does become a problem. You know there's not really such a thing as food waste in the poorer parts of the world? 
    It's nowhere near  the biggest problem associated with climate change, they are all related to power and consumption. We've cleaned up our act in the West by exporting all the power-hungry, polluting industries to places like China. We can't really then turn around and say "oh look China's responsible for all that pollution"(by making things for us).
    Add in completely crazy decisions like building cities with lawns and swimming pools in deserts, destroying forests - these are driven by elites making policies without any consideration of their impacts and confident that they will never have to face the impact of them. 
    Global warming as a term may be true but it allows idiots to confuse climate and weather and to claim that the UK will be like the Med and we'll all benefit. More likely is that the Gulf Stream shuts down and we end up with a UK climate more like Newfoundland. 
    You look at the calibre of political leaders across the world and the potential for change and realise we haven't got much hope. One reason all the billionaires are moving to New Zealand and Alaska. 
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  • Dave2l
    Dave2l Posts: 8,866
    Irony being, the planet Mars will require significant global warming and greenhouse gases when we start to colonize it.

    Steam engines all the way
  • Karim_myBagheri
    Karim_myBagheri Posts: 12,721
    Dave2l said:
    Irony being, the planet Mars will require significant global warming and greenhouse gases when we start to colonize it.

    Steam engines all the way
    If you nuked Mars which would create radiation amongst other things but would it not also help raise the temperature on the planet? After a few years to let the place recover from the radiation we could have ourselves a pleasant warmish planet. Put some water there, stick a couple of umbrellas up and some sun lounges it will probably be no different to the canary islands. 
  • ShootersHillGuru
    ShootersHillGuru Posts: 50,619
    Dave2l said:
    Irony being, the planet Mars will require significant global warming and greenhouse gases when we start to colonize it.

    Steam engines all the way
    I think climate catastrophe will win the race between an extinction event or at least a near extinction event and man colonising Mars. 
  • Huskaris
    Huskaris Posts: 9,849
    Karim_myBagheri said:
    Dave2l said:
    Irony being, the planet Mars will require significant global warming and greenhouse gases when we start to colonize it.

    Steam engines all the way
    If you nuked Mars which would create radiation amongst other things but would it not also help raise the temperature on the planet? After a few years to let the place recover from the radiation we could have ourselves a pleasant warmish planet. Put some water there, stick a couple of umbrellas up and some sun lounges it will probably be no different to the canary islands. 
    Or you'll really piss the aliens off and they will laser Earth out of the galaxy...
  • addick19
    addick19 Posts: 378
    Apparently the IPCC report states that man-made emissions are only responsible for 1.1% of warming. That leaves the other 98.9% non man-made. If true there appears little mankind can do about Global warming. 
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,026
    rananegra said:
    Stig said:
    Cloudworm said:
    blackpool72 said:
    The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. 
    But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
    I disagree with this. If you look at the Drawdown report it doesn't even mention population as an issue. Biggest contributors are food waste, electricity sources and meat and dairy consumption. Population is only a problem because of at least two of these three. More people getting electricity from coal etc and consuming meat and dairy is a problem, but population alone isn't. If we change the way we consume, while supporting third world development and life expectancy, there really are enough resources for about 10bn people.
    Flip that argument on its head and you'll get a lot closer to the truth. A few million people wasting food, eating meat and using lots of electricity would not cause a big problem on a global scale. Several billion people doing the same thing does cause a problem as we are witnessing. You cannot take the reasons out of the context of the scale with which they happen. Over population is a massive problem, it just isn't a very palatable thing for people to hear.
    A few (hundred) million wasting food, electricity etc on the scale that happens in the West, it does become a problem. You know there's not really such a thing as food waste in the poorer parts of the world? 
    It's nowhere near  the biggest problem associated with climate change, they are all related to power and consumption. We've cleaned up our act in the West by exporting all the power-hungry, polluting industries to places like China. We can't really then turn around and say "oh look China's responsible for all that pollution"(by making things for us).
    Add in completely crazy decisions like building cities with lawns and swimming pools in deserts, destroying forests - these are driven by elites making policies without any consideration of their impacts and confident that they will never have to face the impact of them. 
    Global warming as a term may be true but it allows idiots to confuse climate and weather and to claim that the UK will be like the Med and we'll all benefit. More likely is that the Gulf Stream shuts down and we end up with a UK climate more like Newfoundland. 
    You look at the calibre of political leaders across the world and the potential for change and realise we haven't got much hope. One reason all the billionaires are moving to New Zealand and Alaska. 
    Your raise a lot of good points. I certainly do not want to discount power consumption, poor political decision making or any of a number of contributory factors and I don't want to make out that it's everyone else's fault and that us westerners are doing alright because we have hybrid cars and put our recycling out - that is absolutely not what I am arguing. However, climate change is still a numbers game as you so deftly demonstrated when you inserted a bracketed 'hundred' into my 'few million'. The more people there are doing bad things the worse it is, and we all do things that are bad for the balance of the planet just by existing. 

    You pointed out that there's no such thing as food waste in poorer parts of the world. Clearly, there is not in the sense that 'I bought a lot of stuff at the supermarket but didn't use it, so it went off in the fridge' but I think there's probably still a lot of waste on an industrial scale caused by having production and consumption separated and not having the means to control distribution well. Either way, food waste wasn't my argument, I was responding to what Cloudworm had said.

    Finally, whilst I couldn't agree more about the calibre of our politicians, I think that it's a deeper a problem than than individual competence. It's structural. There are two main types of governments on this planet, democracies and dictatorships. The dictatorships are geared to serving the needs of an elite and have unsurprisingly been useless on ecological issues. The democracies are geared around the short term ambitions of politicians, who are constrained to dealing with issues within their term of office. There is no effective mechanism for making long term decisions. Sadly, the democracies have been every bit as useless.
  • Karim_myBagheri
    Karim_myBagheri Posts: 12,721
    addick19 said:
    Apparently the IPCC report states that man-made emissions are only responsible for 1.1% of warming. That leaves the other 98.9% non man-made. If true there appears little mankind can do about Global warming. 
    really? so the fact that since the industrial revolution, the motor car, jet engines, factory's and the emissions that all those release is just a coincidence to the warming of this planet? It was gonna happen anyway?  
  • Cloudworm
    Cloudworm Posts: 975
    edited August 2021
    Stig said:
    Cloudworm said:
    blackpool72 said:
    The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. 
    But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
    I disagree with this. If you look at the Drawdown report it doesn't even mention population as an issue. Biggest contributors are food waste, electricity sources and meat and dairy consumption. Population is only a problem because of at least two of these three. More people getting electricity from coal etc and consuming meat and dairy is a problem, but population alone isn't. If we change the way we consume, while supporting third world development and life expectancy, there really are enough resources for about 10bn people.
    Flip that argument on its head and you'll get a lot closer to the truth. A few million people wasting food, eating meat and using lots of electricity would not cause a big problem on a global scale. Several billion people doing the same thing does cause a problem as we are witnessing. You cannot take the reasons out of the context of the scale with which they happen. Over population is a massive problem, it just isn't a very palatable thing for people to hear.
    But what is more ethical? Euthanase all but a few million and allow them to rape and pillage the Earth at will, or change the resources we currently use to more renewable ones? 

    I'm not saying population isn't an issue. I'm saying it's easier to deal with than the question of resources. It's less of a priority given that it's easier to fix with aid to the developing world and the fact that with more efficient use of resources we're still comfortably under the 10bn ceiling.
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,026
    Cloudworm said:
    Stig said:
    Cloudworm said:
    blackpool72 said:
    The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. 
    But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
    I disagree with this. If you look at the Drawdown report it doesn't even mention population as an issue. Biggest contributors are food waste, electricity sources and meat and dairy consumption. Population is only a problem because of at least two of these three. More people getting electricity from coal etc and consuming meat and dairy is a problem, but population alone isn't. If we change the way we consume, while supporting third world development and life expectancy, there really are enough resources for about 10bn people.
    Flip that argument on its head and you'll get a lot closer to the truth. A few million people wasting food, eating meat and using lots of electricity would not cause a big problem on a global scale. Several billion people doing the same thing does cause a problem as we are witnessing. You cannot take the reasons out of the context of the scale with which they happen. Over population is a massive problem, it just isn't a very palatable thing for people to hear.
    But what is easier and more ethical? Euthanase all but a few million and allow them to rape and pillage the Earth at will, or change the resources we currently use to more renewable ones?

    I'm not saying population isn't an issue. I'm saying it's easier to deal with than the question of resources. It's less of a priority given that it's easier to fix with aid to the developing world and the fact that with more efficient use of resources we're still comfortably under the 10bn ceiling.
    You're not saying population isn't an issue. I'm not anything anything about euthanasia.
  • Cloudworm
    Cloudworm Posts: 975
    I know you're not. I was being a bit flippant. Apologies!

    But what are you suggesting?
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  • Chunes
    Chunes Posts: 17,349
    edited August 2021
    I have some friends who are pooping themselves over this report and I do get it. But I really refuse to buy into this "it's our personal responsibility" bullshit. 

    There's a statistic that 70% of the world's emissions come from 100 companies.

    I'm a freelance copywriter and I recently worked on a video where we interviewed marine biologists about coral decline. The director wanted the experts to give the viewers a call to action, something they could do at home that would really make a difference. The biologists said there really wasn't anything. It's all policy. It's not about plastic straws in the ocean it's about countries dumping millions of tons of toxic waste. 

    And yet frequently we're told it's what we do that's causing environmental problems. You can really only act with your vote. 
  • Huskaris
    Huskaris Posts: 9,849
    edited August 2021
    Mad idea but can't we reduce population AND improve how efficiently we use resources?

    It doesn't need to be an either or scenario
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,026
    Cloudworm said:
    I know you're not. I was being a bit flippant. Apologies!

    But what are you suggesting?
    Ha ha, love a bit of flippancy ;-)

    Sadly I don't have a ready made answer. I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with anything. The best I have at the moment is Huskaris' argument about breaking the link between population and pensions, not sure how that would be managed though.
  • Karim_myBagheri
    Karim_myBagheri Posts: 12,721
    Stig said:
    Cloudworm said:
    I know you're not. I was being a bit flippant. Apologies!

    But what are you suggesting?
    Ha ha, love a bit of flippancy ;-)

    Sadly I don't have a ready made answer. I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with anything. The best I have at the moment is Huskaris' argument about breaking the link between population and pensions, not sure how that would be managed though.
    well the world is relying on you Stig so you better come up with something pretty sharpish. 
  • rananegra
    rananegra Posts: 3,689
    Huskaris said:
    Mad idea but can't we reduce population AND improve how efficiently we use resources?

    It doesn't need to be an either or scenario
    Thing is, population will reduce, one way or another through decline with better education and living standards or disease and war (and I know which I'd prefer). If we had no immigration into the UK over the last 40 odd years our population would be significantly lower, not just because people come and live here but also because immigrants tend to have more kids when they are in a more secure environment, though this drops off after a couple of generations. Countries like Italy that have been sources of emigrants rather than destinations have a falling population; countries that don't let migrants in (like Japan) have a massively declining population. China is now in the beginning of that process- it's too expensive to have a child in the cities and couples tend to only have one: this is not a rate that reproduces the population which is why china have now dropped the limits on how many children you can have (if you're Chinese, different policies apply to Uygurs and Tibetans). 

    Making population the focus allows a smokescreen around consumption. We consume more than the planet can sustain. When I say we, there's really not a lot that we can do on an individual level, it's at a policy level: things like transport policies, trade policies, even things as simple as being able to repair rather than replace, all mean we consume more. The companies that sell us this stuff have no interest in selling things that last because then we won't buy any more of their products. And the same companies have lobbied extensively for years so that the costs they produce through pollution are paid for by us all.

    The oil companies have known for decades that burning fossil fuels contributes(massively) to climate change. They have funded well-placed public figures and media organisations to pretend that there is no climate change, and even some tame scientists, learning from the fight that tobacco companies put up around lung cancer. People talk about conspiracies all  the time, but actual conspiracies that pan out in front of them they ignore. 
  • 24 Red
    24 Red Posts: 578
    edited August 2021
    addick19 said:
    Apparently the IPCC report states that man-made emissions are only responsible for 1.1% of warming. That leaves the other 98.9% non man-made. If true there appears little mankind can do about Global warming. 
    I think you're confusing the proportion of change caused by human activity and the amount of change caused by human activity. From the report:

    'The likely range of human-induced warming in global-mean surface air temperature (GSAT) in 2010– 40 2019 relative to 1850–1900 is 0.8°C–1.3°C, encompassing the observed warming of 0.9°C–1.2°C, while the change attributable to natural forcings is only −0.1°C–0.1°C. The best estimate of human-induced warming is 1.07°C.'
  • Cloudworm
    Cloudworm Posts: 975
    Chunes said:


    And yet frequently we're told it's what we do that's causing environmental problems. You can really only act with your vote. 
    And how you spend your money.
  • Cloudworm
    Cloudworm Posts: 975
    Stig said:
    Cloudworm said:
    I know you're not. I was being a bit flippant. Apologies!

    But what are you suggesting?
    Ha ha, love a bit of flippancy ;-)

    Sadly I don't have a ready made answer. I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with anything. The best I have at the moment is Huskaris' argument about breaking the link between population and pensions, not sure how that would be managed though.
    Here is a great TED Talk on population. Maybe it’ll give you some inspiration!

    https://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg

  • ValleyOfTears
    ValleyOfTears Posts: 1,067
    Jonniesta said:
    ValleyOfTears said:
    They called it "global warming" and found that the global temperature was actually cooling!!

    So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew? 

    Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)

    Well, that's wrong. Global warming causes climate change, it is the increase in temperature as a result of human activity. 

    Weather alters, yes, climate shouldn't... not to this extent and certainly not over a period of 150 years. But ours is changing more rapidly than in the history of the life-supporting planet. 

    Get on with our lives, fine, but know that some people in this world won't be able to, and future generations will find it even harder.

    Greta Thunberg vacuous for having a view and trying to make a positive change? Strange viewpoint.

    "Of course there is a Nazi empire, leaders alter, who knew? Get on with our lives and let him take Europe"
    Jonniesta:

    It is agreed among those able to debate around the world in virtually every debating chamber that when one introduces "Hitler" "Nazis" etc .to "win" the argument, The debater is publically conceding they have no point to argue any more.

    I just thought I would gently share that with you to spare you any future embarrassment. 
  • ValleyOfTears
    ValleyOfTears Posts: 1,067
    Huskaris said:
    Overpopulation is undoubtedly a huge issue.

    Implying anyone is suggesting "killing off" millions of people is stupid, typical Daily Mail headline territory, nearly as much as blaming "the elites" :D 

    Birth rates need to continue to fall, this planet, by almost every estimation, can sustain just a fraction of the population we have now. 

    We really are destroying this planet. For ourselves but also for the future generations and the creatures that surround us.
    Huskaris you are simply wrong. Birthrates do not need to continue to fall. You may not be aware of the birth replacement rate in western Europe. But all countries currently are NOT meeting that replacement rate. Even Malthus would turn in his grave at how perilous the situation is. 

    #weneedMOREbabies

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