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{Looks up the exact meaning of, 'common sense'}.... :btime: :kersplat:
maximus otter
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“So, the venerable national treasure Sir David Attenborough was back on our screens last night predicting total catastrophe if we humans fail to act on Climate Change. He gave us all the usual warnings – “right now we are facing our greatest threat in thousands of years – climate change” and “there isn’t much time left” and “the science is clear that urgent action is needed” and of course “we are facing a man-made disaster on a global scale”. But these predictions of total climate catastrophe have a long and not very honourable history.
In 1982, the UN announced a two-decade tipping point for action on environmental issues. Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, that the “world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now.” According to Tolba, lack of action would bring “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.”
In 1989, the UN was still trying to sell “a coming climate catastrophe” to the public. In July 1989, Noel Brown, the then-director of the New York office of UNEP was warning of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming. According to the article: “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.”
By 2006 the situation was apparently becoming critical as Al Gore explained in his fantasy film “An Inconvenient Truth”. According to Gore we had just 10 years left to save the planet.
But in 2007, seven years after that supposed 2002 climate catastrophe hadn’t happened, Rajendra Pachauri, then the chief of the UN IPPC, declared 2012 the climate deadline by which it was imperative to act: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
In 2009 our very own jet-setting multi-millionaire Prince Charles was apparently also an expert on climatology just like jet-setting multi-millionaire Al Gore. Jet-setting multi-millionaire Charles originally announced in March 2009 that we had “less than 100 months to alter our behavior before we risk catastrophic climate change.”
Later that year, at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Al Gore sought UN climate agreement immediately. “We have to do it this year. Not next year, this year,” he demanded. “And of course the clock is ticking because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”
In fact 2009 seems to have been a popular year for climate catastrophe predictions. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his own deadline in August 2009, when he warned of “incalculable” suffering without a UN climate deal in December 2009.
At the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Prince Charles jetted in with the usual retinue of flunkies to warn us: “The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control.”
In 2010, the Prince of Wales said, “Ladies and gentlemen we now have only 86 months left before we reach the tipping point.”
But in 2012, the UN gave Planet Earth another four-year reprieve. UN Foundation president and former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth called Obama’s re-election the “last window of opportunity” to get it right on climate change.
By 2014, a clearly frustrated Prince Charles seemed to abandon the countdown, announcing, “We are running out of time. How many times have I found myself saying this over recent years?”
In 2017, Prince Charles’s one-hundred-month deadline finally expired. What did Charles have to say? Was he giving up? Did he proclaim the end times for the planet? Far from it. Two years earlier, in 2015, Prince Charles abandoned his hundred-month countdown and generously gave the world a reprieve by extending his climate tipping point another thirty-five years, to the year 2050! In a July 2015 interview “His Royal Highness warns that we have just 35 years to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.” So, instead of facing the expiration of his climate catastrophe deadline head on, the sixty-nine-year-old Charles kicked the climate doomsday deadline down the road until 2050 when he would be turning the ripe age of 102.
And we mustn’t forget top UK scientist Sir David King who warned in 2004 that that by 2100 Antarctica could be the only habitable continent. Like Charles, Sir David won’t be around in 2100 making his prediction extremely convenient for him and his career.
The above is just a small selection of warnings from Climate Change doom-mongers.”
http://www.snouts-in-the-trough.com/archives/24531
maximus otter
In 1982, the UN announced a two-decade tipping point for action on environmental issues. Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, that the “world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now.” According to Tolba, lack of action would bring “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.”
In 1989, the UN was still trying to sell “a coming climate catastrophe” to the public. In July 1989, Noel Brown, the then-director of the New York office of UNEP was warning of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming. According to the article: “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.”
By 2006 the situation was apparently becoming critical as Al Gore explained in his fantasy film “An Inconvenient Truth”. According to Gore we had just 10 years left to save the planet.
But in 2007, seven years after that supposed 2002 climate catastrophe hadn’t happened, Rajendra Pachauri, then the chief of the UN IPPC, declared 2012 the climate deadline by which it was imperative to act: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
In 2009 our very own jet-setting multi-millionaire Prince Charles was apparently also an expert on climatology just like jet-setting multi-millionaire Al Gore. Jet-setting multi-millionaire Charles originally announced in March 2009 that we had “less than 100 months to alter our behavior before we risk catastrophic climate change.”
Later that year, at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Al Gore sought UN climate agreement immediately. “We have to do it this year. Not next year, this year,” he demanded. “And of course the clock is ticking because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”
In fact 2009 seems to have been a popular year for climate catastrophe predictions. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his own deadline in August 2009, when he warned of “incalculable” suffering without a UN climate deal in December 2009.
At the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, Prince Charles jetted in with the usual retinue of flunkies to warn us: “The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control.”
In 2010, the Prince of Wales said, “Ladies and gentlemen we now have only 86 months left before we reach the tipping point.”
But in 2012, the UN gave Planet Earth another four-year reprieve. UN Foundation president and former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth called Obama’s re-election the “last window of opportunity” to get it right on climate change.
By 2014, a clearly frustrated Prince Charles seemed to abandon the countdown, announcing, “We are running out of time. How many times have I found myself saying this over recent years?”
In 2017, Prince Charles’s one-hundred-month deadline finally expired. What did Charles have to say? Was he giving up? Did he proclaim the end times for the planet? Far from it. Two years earlier, in 2015, Prince Charles abandoned his hundred-month countdown and generously gave the world a reprieve by extending his climate tipping point another thirty-five years, to the year 2050! In a July 2015 interview “His Royal Highness warns that we have just 35 years to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.” So, instead of facing the expiration of his climate catastrophe deadline head on, the sixty-nine-year-old Charles kicked the climate doomsday deadline down the road until 2050 when he would be turning the ripe age of 102.
And we mustn’t forget top UK scientist Sir David King who warned in 2004 that that by 2100 Antarctica could be the only habitable continent. Like Charles, Sir David won’t be around in 2100 making his prediction extremely convenient for him and his career.
The above is just a small selection of warnings from Climate Change doom-mongers.”
http://www.snouts-in-the-trough.com/archives/24531
maximus otter
“The planet is facing destruction, but when the person telling you that is a heavy weed-smoker called ‘Loz’ who plays the bongos, it’s very difficult to believe it. "
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news...otesters-didnt-look-like-twats-20190416184739
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news...otesters-didnt-look-like-twats-20190416184739
Sharon Hill
Complicated biological machine
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Yeah, but the source may influence those around him who think he's the shizz. So, for example, it's really important for churches to bring up such a topic.
AlchoPwn
Public Service is my Motto.
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That was the hole in the Ozone Layer they were primarily talking about in 1982. You remember? The chloroflurocarbons problem? Yes, people were speaking about Global Warming, but it was considered a secondary issue. After that in 1987 the Montreal Protocol was agreed on, but only slowly adopted over the next few years by most countries involved in the talks. So while we largely got rid of the offending CFCs, global warming continued to go unaddressed because it wasn't seen as an "immediate" problem.
Now to be fair, we know that life persisted when the Earth has had higher levels of CO2, but most of the fossil fuels we are now burning were laid down during that time. The rate of mass extinction of animal species should distress us. We are reducing the biodiversity that we rely on for compounds that will create new medicines. There is also the very real danger that the rising temperatures will kill off the Antarctic ocean planktons that we rely on to replenish our oxygen supply, as despite what you may have heard in highschool, trees are not our primary source of oxygen, and many of them respire CO2 for half the day. We rely on those phytoplanktons for 50-85% of our oxygen. Then there is the comparatively minor issue of all the excess heat energy from transport and industry in the air creating huge storm fronts and natural disasters (tell the insurance industry that is a minor issue). Statistically, the rate and power of wild weather has increased around the world.
The good news is that most of our problems have good technical fixes. The bad news is that vested interests in the fossil fuel industry, rather than investing in these new processes, are doing everything they can to stymie the change we need to survive and prosper as a species.
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Frideswide
Fortea Morgana :) PeteByrdie certificated Princess
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Coal
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Yep.
All the energy we use returns to heat, however it's generated. 3MW of 'green' electricity still releases 3MW of heat into the global system. I suspect this vast increase in the heat we are pumping into the system is much more likely to be driving global warming than a quite trifling increase in Co2.
In any event, the solution is for everyone to use far less of everything. That means, small cars for all, proper public transport so more folk can dispense with cars more often and no non-essential flights. No overseas holidays, no jetting off for fun and gap years.
The unpalatable truth is that there is not and will not be a 'magic way' to fix this.
Everyone has to give stuff up. Everyone, the rich, the 'important' and regular folk. Everyone.
But, until the 'great and the good'* set a continuing example, most people won't change.
* They're not great and they're not good, but you know what I mean.
maximus otter
Recovering policeman
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8/10/18: “The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change’s (IPCC) newly-released climate report, once again, found little to no evidence global warming caused many types of extreme weather events to increase.”
https://www.thegwpf.com/ipcc-report-extreme-weather-events-not-getting-worse/
maximus otter
PeteByrdie
Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
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From the dates, I'm assuming this is referring to this report:
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
I've yet to absorb it, but I think the relevant information might be in chapter 3. Unfortunately, I won't have the time to read it all for a while.
Naughty_Felid
kneesy earsy nosey
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You do realize that Roger Pielke jr actually believes in climate change and the need to do something about it? Also that his academic qualifications are in maths, political science and public policy?
So he's not an actual climate scientist.
Jim
Justified & Ancient
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Sounds about right at least in the northeast USA. Were just wrapping up another long cold winter (same last year). Wouldn't mind if it was a bit milder Nov - April.
maximus otter
Recovering policeman
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You do realise that Pielke didn’t write the report, but is merely commenting on its findings?
Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the IPCC for thirteen years, was a railway engineer, not a climate scientist. His entitlement to pontificate on matters climatic didn’t seem to be affected.
maximus otter
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eburacum
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You are correct that phytoplankton produces the bulk of the new oxygen that enters our atmosphere. However this is itself just another minor effect, since the quantity of oxygen that enters the atmosphere in this way is very, very small compared to the amount of oxygen the planet already has in its air.
The vast majority of the oxygen molecules in the air were created millions of years ago by long dead (and buried) plants, and even killing all the plants on Earth would hardly reduce the oxygen content of the air at all. Of all the things we need to worry about with respect to global warming, oxygen depletion is the least of them.
eburacum
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Waste heat from industry and other human activities is also a minor effect compared to the warming due to increased levels of carbon dioxide.
The energy we recieve from the Sun is about 300 watts per square metre of the Earth's surface; the waste heat we create by human activity is 0.03 watts per metre. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming amounts to 3 watts per metre or thereabouts; without carbon dioxide warming the planet we would be in a permanent ice age, so in normal circumstances it is a good thing. These are not normal circumstances.
The energy we recieve from the Sun is about 300 watts per square metre of the Earth's surface; the waste heat we create by human activity is 0.03 watts per metre. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming amounts to 3 watts per metre or thereabouts; without carbon dioxide warming the planet we would be in a permanent ice age, so in normal circumstances it is a good thing. These are not normal circumstances.
hunck
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That there is global warming seems fairly clear. 18 of the 19 warmest years have occurred since 2001 - NASA data. That looks like a trend. Whether you believe it's man-made or natural is up to you. I take a consensus of scientists opinions over a blogger.
There is evidence of glaciers & ice sheets melting pretty much everywhere. That alone is not good sign. Concerns over tipping points & feedback loops would seem justified. Whether anything can be done to minimise these things is open to question. There's a lot of vested interests.
There is evidence of glaciers & ice sheets melting pretty much everywhere. That alone is not good sign. Concerns over tipping points & feedback loops would seem justified. Whether anything can be done to minimise these things is open to question. There's a lot of vested interests.
Sharon Hill
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Not only does global warming come with its own array of nasty consequences but it exacerbates humans' shortsightedness.
Another obvious impact of global warming is the rise in sea level https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html and extended drought in many places globally. We are running out of fresh water (greatly in part because of our wasteful practices). That is another example of where employing technology will help. On the other hand, other places are receiving increased rainfall or greater short-term rainfall in specific events resulting in more flooding events (also partially our own doing). You can't readily move water across great distances. Maybe one day we will have to do so.
I'll also add the spread of warm-climate invasive species and mosquito-borne illnesses to places that never had them before.
Another obvious impact of global warming is the rise in sea level https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html and extended drought in many places globally. We are running out of fresh water (greatly in part because of our wasteful practices). That is another example of where employing technology will help. On the other hand, other places are receiving increased rainfall or greater short-term rainfall in specific events resulting in more flooding events (also partially our own doing). You can't readily move water across great distances. Maybe one day we will have to do so.
I'll also add the spread of warm-climate invasive species and mosquito-borne illnesses to places that never had them before.
Georgek
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I don't know about global warming over there...but it certainly is not over here.
We could do with a bit more CO2 up there to send some warmth back down?
We got some of these eco-warriors down London creating chaos.
I think the council got the hose pipe out and some stuck their hands with super glue on trains.
I dunno.....maybe it is time to get our tents out and go back to the donkey?
We could do with a bit more CO2 up there to send some warmth back down?
We got some of these eco-warriors down London creating chaos.
I think the council got the hose pipe out and some stuck their hands with super glue on trains.
I dunno.....maybe it is time to get our tents out and go back to the donkey?
Mungoman
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Well MO, I don't know about that - shit is hitting the fan in places on the planet. coral polyps are having mass extinctions, the pH of oceans is increasing in acidity, Water temperature determines gender/sex in a lot of aquatic creatures, and as was said above, 75% of our renewable oxygen comes from Oceans via phytoplankton...which is effected by acidity and temperature, and meanwhile we're still pouring shit into our seas.
Maybe the IPCC are not seeing the trees for the forest.
Cochise
Priest of the cult of the Dog with the Broken Paw
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The trouble is, we are human, fallible, and tend to get caught up in religions. Hence anyone pointing out that there are flaws in the reasoning - and indeed the actions - taken to counter a rise in CO2 levels tends to be shouted down. A bit more thought about the consequences of change would be in order before clamouring for it. An example is that over whole life, studies have shown that electric cars cause the release of more CO2 than modern diesel cars.
I had been told this several times by engineers that I know, but I've now found a reference.:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019...c-cars-considerably-worse-climate-diesel-cars
The study is by the University of Cologne and the original can probably be traced on line.
I had been told this several times by engineers that I know, but I've now found a reference.:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019...c-cars-considerably-worse-climate-diesel-cars
The study is by the University of Cologne and the original can probably be traced on line.
Cochise
Priest of the cult of the Dog with the Broken Paw
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No, not at all. It is the CO2 consumed in mining for the rare minerals that are needed for efficient batteries that generates the CO2, as you would know if you had actually bothered to read the reference.
Most cars expend more CO2 in their manufacture (and subsequent recycling) than they emit from their exhaust pipes in their working life. Electric cars produce no direct emissions when in use, the cost is in their manufacture and in subsequent replacement battery packs.
OK, it shifts the problem to another country, but that is hardly a win, is it?
Sharon Hill
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I have a plug-in hybrid and in order to not be hypocritical, my husband made us switch our electricity supplier to a green source - all wind and solar generated.
Sharon Hill
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It does mention electricity from fossil fuels. Also, I believe much of those rare metals in the batteries can be recycled. I haven't read the actual study, just this article from a seemingly biased site, so I'm not going to buy this claim just yet. It doesn't appear to add up.
PeteByrdie
Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
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The rare metals are recycled, as are the entire batteries sometimes, which still have a number of potential uses when they're no longer able to hold enough charge for use in vehicles.
eburacum
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I did read it, and it does not say that. Carbon dioxide is not generated by the mining process per se, but by the generation of the energy used to mine and process the minerals. If we use renewable energy for the mining and processing then the whole process can be made carbon neutral. We are a long way from that.
In the meantime, an artificial fossil fuel like generated hydrogen or methane would be much better.
Cochise
Priest of the cult of the Dog with the Broken Paw
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It does mention the alternatives at the end. Methane is particularly interesting because it is renewable and also a greenhouse gas, so using it would do no harm (mind you, I'm not a chemist, I don't know what you'd have left after you burned it).
Cochise
Priest of the cult of the Dog with the Broken Paw
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The study was from the University of Cologne.
blessmycottonsocks
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Just as an aside, our old gas boiler is 21 years old and becoming unreliable. We have a British Gas salesman calling around tonight to give us a quotation for a new boiler.
I'm aware that the government is contemplating banning gas boilers in new build homes and am wondering whether an electric combi boiler may be a better investment (as well as reducing our carbon footprint slightly).
Electric boilers are cheaper to install, but apparently significantly more expensive to run.
Due to the position of our house, solar panels are not an option, so it's a straight choice between gas or electric.
Any advice guys?
I'm aware that the government is contemplating banning gas boilers in new build homes and am wondering whether an electric combi boiler may be a better investment (as well as reducing our carbon footprint slightly).
Electric boilers are cheaper to install, but apparently significantly more expensive to run.
Due to the position of our house, solar panels are not an option, so it's a straight choice between gas or electric.
Any advice guys?
eburacum
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Burning methane would produce CO2 and water, both greenhouse gases; but in theory the whole fuel cycle could be made carbon neutral. Fuels are better than electriuc batteries because they use oxygen from the air, so they are more energy dense per kilogram. But hydrogen is a difficult fuel, because it is intrinsically low density (a cubic metre of hydrogen is much lighter than a cubic metre of methane, or of high-octane fuel). Just about the best option all round is kerosene, which is why it works so well.