The Great Global Warming Swindle

Cochise said:
You could call the rainforests either the planets lungs or nature's air scrubbers. No amount of artifically planted forests of conifers will make up for them.
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The real lungs of the planet belong to the vegetation in the seas, particularly algae.
I've heard it said that the atmosphere would still function if all the trees in South America were cut down - but I wouldn't want to test that statement for real. I'm with you, we should all be planting trees, not chopping them down. The ones we should plant should be deciduous trees, especially fruit-bearing ones.
 
So ... save the trees? As the slogan had it back in the 70's(?)
So, we've gone from save trees and use plastic to stop plastic pollution and use paper.
I know it's more nuanced than that, but recycling could help both; reduce plastic pollution thus allowing the use of plastic where paper isn't an option and recycle paper/cardboard to minimise the need for tree destruction.
 
Stormkhan said:
So ... save the trees? As the slogan had it back in the 70's(?)
So, we've gone from save trees and use plastic to stop plastic pollution and use paper.
I know it's more nuanced than that, but recycling could help both; reduce plastic pollution thus allowing the use of plastic where paper isn't an option and recycle paper/cardboard to minimise the need for tree destruction.
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Well, I haven't :) I've been concerned about deforestation since the 70's, while accepting Myth's point about algae. The modern concern about polluting the oceans in various ways I am right behind.

No harm in recycling plastic as long as it doesn't use more energy than making new plastic.

To an old cynic like me the whole change in emphasis looks like a classic switch'n'bait to distract us from what is really going on.
 
I individually wrap my paper straws in 'cling film'.

Granted it's a bit fiddly but it stops them going soggy and means I can re-use them multiple times.
Or at least until the cling film starts getting icky or loose.
 
I too have stainless steel straws and only use bamboo toilet paper and kitchen towel.

Recycled paper of any kind is notoriously hard to get in my neck of the woods, but I really do prefer it. And it makes me wonder where the council take my recycling every week and what they do with it lol

There's no doubt we're speeding up climate change, but historically if you look at millenia rather than "since records began" (200 years at the most!) our planet has had cycles of extreme cold and heat. I wonder if we're maybe trying to just delay the inevitable by removing all forms of pollution?
 
Sprite666 said:
There's no doubt we're speeding up climate change, but historically if you look at millenia rather than "since records began" (200 years at the most!) our planet has had cycles of extreme cold and heat. I wonder if we're maybe trying to just delay the inevitable by removing all forms of pollution?
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I think 200 years is not enough of a dataset to be useful for predicting climate change reliably.
OK, I'm not a statistician, so what do I know?
 
Trevp666 said:
I individually wrap my paper straws in 'cling film'.

Granted it's a bit fiddly but it stops them going soggy and means I can re-use them multiple times.
Or at least until the cling film starts getting icky or loose.
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Or until the bacteria take over, and have a straw pole on who's going to infect you first!
 
These days the weather people talk about “ weak “ steering currents caused by the earth overheating ?
 
Human penises are shrinking due to pollution, bloody hell ban all cars and air travel immediately, shut down all heating, I’m off to the local farm with a big bag of cow bungs, were doomed, doomed I tell you.
 
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Nothing at all I remember when we had pollution so bad you could walk into a lamppost and not see it and falling into a river would mean a stomach pump, I don’t want to go back. But I do object to rationing by price we’re the poor have to go without and the rich can afford to carry on as normal,
 
RaM said:
Nothing at all I remember when we had pollution so bad you could walk into a lamppost and not see it and falling into a river would mean a stomach pump, I don’t want to go back. But I do object to rationing by price we’re the poor have to go without and the rich can afford to carry on as normal,
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I agree with you about the price, we are told we are in a climate emergency but the alternatives are so much more expensive, in most cases beyond the reach of the majority, so we end up with a small minority of quite wealthy people who can afford to use alternatives preaching to those that can’t
 
Stormkhan said:
So ... save the trees? As the slogan had it back in the 70's(?)
So, we've gone from save trees and use plastic to stop plastic pollution and use paper.
I know it's more nuanced than that, but recycling could help both; reduce plastic pollution thus allowing the use of plastic where paper isn't an option and recycle paper/cardboard to minimise the need for tree destruction.
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Trees and wood products are a renewable resource but on a long time scale. The 70s campaign was to stop mature trees being felled without replacement of the same or similar species. If we collectively plant many more than we use we are on to a good thing. Edited to add: we (as a species) need to be thinking about usage and planning replanting on a scale of decades or centuries to let forest ecosystems form and mature.

The earliest plastics were based on cellulose - a component of wood pulp fibres. I have predicted that at some point the future will be wood-based as opposed to fossil fuel based - for fuels, for plastics, for buildings. Going back to a polished wooden dashboard rather than one made of plastic is something we may yet see!

Using woods for fuel is almost carbon-neutral depending on the distance it is transported/resources used to 'farm' them, as trees (and all photosynthesising plants) won't emit any more CO2 than they have converted to O2 during their lifetime.
 
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Here's an interesting take on conspiracy theories.
Please note - while the You Tube channel might be a political commentator, this particular video has no political bias.

TLDR: no matter how bizarre or counter-intuitive a conspiracy theory is, they can still be harmful to all of us.
 
Stormkhan said:
Here's an interesting take on conspiracy theories.
Please note - while the You Tube channel might be a political commentator, this particular video has no political bias.

TLDR: no matter how bizarre or counter-intuitive a conspiracy theory is, they can still be harmful to all of us.
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True. . . but why is he wearing that hat indoors? Saving internal heat perhaps?
 
Stormkhan said:
TLDR: no matter how bizarre or counter-intuitive a conspiracy theory is, they can still be harmful to all of us.
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Only if they're actually wrong.
 
Stormkhan said:
I take your point. But the last thing he points out is to ask theorists "What if you are wrong?"
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Which is a question everyone should ask themselves. Even hard science (chemistry, physics) evolves as new discoveries are made. Soft science (that not provable by experiment) is in essence no different to religion, or at least the way some religions were once regarded as infallible fact.
 
The fact that carbon dioxide retains heat is hard science, not soft science. The question is, how significant is this effect?

One answer to this is that it adds ten to a hundred times more heat to the atmosphere than all the waste heat of our civilisation. On the other hand, even this added heat is small compared to the effects of the orbital oscillations which give rise to our glacial cycle. If we were fated to enter another ice age in the next thousand years or so, then even anthropogenic global warming wouldn't stop it. But according to current thinking the next ice age is tens of thousands of years away, so we can't rely on global cooling to offset AGW.
 
eburacum said:
The fact that carbon dioxide retains heat is hard science, not soft science. The question is, how significant is this effect?

One answer to this is that it adds ten to a hundred times more heat to the atmosphere than all the waste heat of our civilisation. On the other hand, even this added heat is small compared to the effects of the orbital oscillations which give rise to our glacial cycle. If we were fated to enter another ice age in the next thousand years or so, then even anthropogenic global warming wouldn't stop it. But according to current thinking the next ice age is tens of thousands of years away, so we can't rely on global cooling to offset AGW.
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But the normal temperature between ice ages is warmer than we are currently experiencing - geological evidence supports this. Similarly CO2 levels in the atmosphere are at low levels for an interglacial period.

So how can we discount that we are simply warming up to normal after finally emerging from the last ice age? If indeed we have.
 
Hmm; CO2 levels in previous interglacials have been high, but only as high as 310ppm. We are up to 400+ppm now. The last time CO2 was this high was back in the Tertiary, before the ice ages started.

Co2_glacial_cycles_800k.png


The long term trend for CO2 is downward, and glacial periods will get colder and closer together - but not yet, until the current interglacial is finished.

If we intend to live on Earth for millions of years into the deep future we'll probably need to do some serious terraforming on our own planet; compared to that, this current global climate crisis will seem like child's play.
 
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