birchesgreen
Established Member
No, they were all killed off. By climate change of course.This looks like a dinosaur rant thread.
Helped by a big meteorite.
No, they were all killed off. By climate change of course.This looks like a dinosaur rant thread.
There will be something else along soon.No, they were all killed off. By climate change of course.
Helped by a big meteorite.
See, the major question is what is the direct connection between these labels and environmental protection?Identity politics? Hmmm
Anti-racist Tick Ant-colonial Tick Pro decent health systems and health workers Tick Feminist Tick Pro-LGBT rights Tick For good living & work conditions for all, and generally decent Tick
That sounds to me like a good all-round list of qualities I expect in people that I meet from day-to-day. Maybe there's a bit of a language barrier here, but it very much sounds to me that you're against all of this. Please tell me I'm misreading your post!
One fb advert aimed at me is aggressively promoting insect consumption. I told them to bugger off.
It's an interesting question, one that I had been wondering
COP26 has generated a few more "climate" headlines than would be the norm, but there's a UN Climate Conference every year so this is nothing new (albeit I don't think it's been in the UK before)
A lot of things are bad (extinctions, weather events) but quantifiably worse than ten years ago? I'm not sure
I think (and it's just a hunch) that the four reasons for the increase in awareness over the past five years or so would be:
Per capita, until fairly recently the UK was one of the worst offenders. Every country has a role to play.I for one fully believe that humans are adversely affecting the planet but sadly I think that, unless the big industrialized countries (USA, China, Russia, India) get fully on board, nothing we do will have much effect.
I don't disagree, hence the later part of my post.Per capita, until fairly recently the UK was one of the worst offenders. Every country has a role to play.
(snipped your list for brevity). I think that's quite a good analysis, but there's one other thing I'd add which I think is quite important: It's that, at least in the UK, the reality of climate change has ceased to be controversial in mainstream politics because the Conservatives have now largely accepted the need to deal with climate change: As little as 5 years ago, and certainly 10 years ago, there was still a huge strand of thinking within the Tory Party and in much of the media that climate change was not real / was some kind of left-wing plot to increase taxes. That kind of thinking seems to have largely disappeared from Tory MPs, and in terms of the media, even the Telegraph now has a largely pro-action-to-combat-climate-change stance (To be fair, if you look on the pages of places like Conservative Home you'll still see a fair bit of climate-change-denial stuff, but these days it's almost entirely confined to comments by ordinary people reading the site - it's no longer coming from senior figures in the Tory party). I think the fact that we now have no mainstream parties opposed to action on climate change has really helped the culture in terms of the media reporting/promoting stuff around COP conferences etc. It means that the desirability of strong action on climate change can now generally be reported as accepted opinion rather than being something that is controversial and may have in the past looked like political bias.
I suspect related to this is the (very sensible and correct) decision by the BBC a couple of years ago that they should be giving greater weight to scientific consensus in their reporting of climate change (rather than - as they had previously been doing - giving quite a bit of coverage to climate change deniers in the supposed name of impartiality without thinking through that these people generally weren't qualified to know what they were talking about).
while we as a moderate country might not be as adversely affected so far (although flooding impacts are definitely notable), even if we hold off for a while longer, there is such a thing as "climate refugees", and we'll be a prime destination for them if we don't help affected areas cope.
Because it's fashionable with younger people, and gets the young to vote.Why has the concerns regarding climate change suddenly became a top priority again? We have known about global warming and carbon emissions for over two decades and it was a important topic back in the early/mid 2000s then died down (at least in politics/media) until the past year or so.
Has there been any reason for this? It seems to be all we hear about in the media at the moment.
No other reason for climate concern?Because it's fashionable with younger people, and gets the young to vote.
Not really. Its a Scapegoat every time we get a bad flood.No other reason for climate concern?
Surely it's a troll.Can see why we are doomed...
It's a bit tedious how it gets blamed for all the bad flooding and coastal erosion in the UK. We've created our own environmental catastrophe by rampantly building on flood plains, dismissing the value of wetlands, and paving every available surface in urban areas.Not really. Its a Scapegoat every time we get a bad flood.
Not really. Its a Scapegoat every time we get a bad flood.
There are a number of solutions to flooding mitigation that will also cut emissions, including habitat restoration around river catchments, especially high up the catchment area, and also having more green roofs and rainwater harvesting (the latter two were suggested as a more sustainable alternative to the Thames Tideway Tunnel).It's a bit tedious how it gets blamed for all the bad flooding and coastal erosion in the UK. We've created our own environmental catastrophe by rampantly building on flood plains, dismissing the value of wetlands, and paving every available surface in urban areas.
Sure, a combination of cyclical weather events and man-made climate change have made the consequences worse. We seem to have reached a point though where every time there's a flood we just point to them, shrug, and say "we really must do something about that". As a result we never do anything radical about dealing with rainwater and river run-offs, and more homes are ruined, lives are lost and sewage is emergency-pumped into rivers.
We have to cut carbon emissions. We also have to acknowledge that, whatever the cause, we have some fundamental problems which have boring engineering solutions, and they need solving now. Making net-zero your solution to flooding on the river Severn is like selling your hohse because you don't like the colour of your lounge wallpaper.
I certainly don't object to changing the concept of well-being. I just think it's a big argument to bite off in order to deal with the growing crisis in water management. I'd probably also prefer to manage what we regard as valuable, so that we can make a less dramatic change than moving away from GDP, but use taxes and nudge tactics to get people to value less destructive things more - push people more to virtual goods and away from consumer landfill.There are a number of solutions to flooding mitigation that will also cut emissions, including habitat restoration around river catchments, especially high up the catchment area, and also having more green roofs and rainwater harvesting (the latter two were suggested as a more sustainable alternative to the Thames Tideway Tunnel).
The reason we're building on floodplains and concreting large urban areas is because we desire infinite growth, which is both impossible and unsustainable. The best action we can take on climate change as a whole is to change our metrics for measuring wellbeing and call it a day on GDP.
You don't agree that the stormier weather and raised sea levels together might be accelerating erosion?What actually wound me up more was a BBC news article filed under climate change, which was about trying to protect the Norfolk coast from erosion. There's a whole world of things we're doing wrong there, but climate change really isn't much to do with it.
I think this is something which has been happening for hundreds of years, and is continuing to happen at a broadly similar rate over the whole coast. It's certainly speeding up in areas where wetlands have been disturbed, but not a great deal in general. Trying to suggest that recent global changes are responsible for that is a bit of a reach, and more importantly it doesn't help you to solve the problem.You don't agree that the stormier weather and raised sea levels together might be accelerating erosion?
The east coast has been suffering from coastal erosion and loss of land since at least the time of the Romans. This issue in particular likely has little to do with climate change.You don't agree that the stormier weather and raised sea levels together might be accelerating erosion?
The east coast has been suffering from coastal erosion and loss of land since at least the time of the Romans. This issue in particular likely has little to do with climate change.
Erosion isn't only caused by sea level rise, though it's certainly a major factor. Worth noting that a few thousand years ago Great Britain was connected to the mainland - the erosion and sea level rise then has been a gradual change. Anthropogenic climate change may have contributed to it, but I think the east coast would still be disappearing whether we cut emissions or not.In low-lying coastal areas the general rule of thumb is one metre of shoreline lost per every centimetre of sea level rise. Large swathes of eastern English coasts have been nibbled away by the North Sea for centuries. Climate change inevitably exacerbates that.
Actually since the last Ice Age the S of England has been rising (relative to sea-level,) after being relieved of the weight of ice which formerly pushed it down. I suspect sea-level rise now outweighs that.Erosion isn't only caused by sea level rise, though it's certainly a major factor. Worth noting that a few thousand years ago Great Britain was connected to the mainland - the erosion and sea level rise then has been a gradual change. Anthropogenic climate change may have contributed to it, but I think the east coast would still be disappearing whether we cut emissions or not.
The problem is some people said they removed their head from the sand but do nothing, except some may make a banner or board to join the protest to show how they care about climate change.Please remove your head from the sand and look around a bit.
I'll roll out my usual reply to climate change skeptics.
Say we move away from pumping huge amounts of pollution into the air, move away from cars dominating our city centres making it difficult and often dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, move away from city centres having high levels of air pollution that hugely impact the health of millions of people and instead move to more sustainable methods of transportation and living. And then we find out that man made climate change wasn't a thing. Wouldn't we have made changes for the better anyway?
Basically why does it matter if man made climate changes is a thing or not? Much of the actions we have to take to prevent it are generally good for the environment and good for us as humans anyway! We should all want to live in a less polluting and more green world!!