Devonian

Why? I find what is going on, the changes being wrought by our actions, almost too terrible to pay attention to anymore. Are you going to call me names as well? You really just have to follow what is going on in the Arctic, or the world glaciers or to Australian temperature and rainfall to see the starkness of the changes. Ok, you can find those who refuse to see - and they too normally resort to insult...

You really don't keep up with what is going on in the world then? There is a change going on, it's gaining pace. When will we notice? Well, I began to notice changes to the world about 30 years ago, you, obviously have not not yet noticed. And catastrophe? Not a word I use but the changes going on are happening over time, many people might not ever notice them, but impact us all they surely will.

Look, this is indeed nuance but he said 'we must' while you said such people say 'you must'. When someone says 'we must' I feel its not an order, when someone says 'you must' it is. That is just my view.

I'm not aware vegan activist have the power to order ('you must') people to do things?

Yup, plenty of people think going vegan would help 'save' the planet' (though I'm not a vegan) but I queried your 'you must' quotes. I don't think I've heard a vegan say that - not in the 'giving an order' way you seemed to be implying. There is a difference between my view that there are thing we need to do (as I said in a post higher, there are solutions, lifestyle changes, that would work if we both did them ourselves but more importantly voted in govts to do them) and an implication that I, well people like me, might be ordering people to do things.

That's a rather broad reply to a narrowly targeted comment. As someone who didn't vote for the current govt or 'you know what' that we're not talking about' my feeling is votes do matter and a lot... However, if people voted for what I described in sufficient numbers it would happen.

??? What's with the 'you must' line? I (and people like me) have an opinion, have i said 'you must' to you? No. Who had said 'you must' be a vegan? No one. No one here has any power, few people in the world have power over others. But, again, the solutions to the world's problem's are available and simple to do (I mentioned some earlier) - if only we, humanity, would do them. I actually feel its me, and people like me, who 'must' do something. I have to live on a planet with people who don't give a flying do da about its future or its health My opinion is that I should be able to say 'I think we need to do better. We can do this....' without being insulted for that view...

There are plenty of easy, workable, practical and efficient solutions that would provide a cleaner, less polluted world and happier more healthy people (more spending on solar and wind power, small cars, more spending public transport, more use of bikes, better diets and less spending on fossil fuels). The problem, the only problem, is getting humans to adopt and or vote for them.

I can't see the link or relevance to Thunberg refusing an award in your post. Would it be 'look over there' by any chance? Or simply tu quoque again......

My bad, I thought your post implied you had an idea what the right places are. instead it looks like this could develop into a rather pointless 'twenty questions'. Ok, would the answer be 'in China'? 19 left...

What are the right places?

First paragraph yes. But, again to solve such problems we actually have to do something about it. So, yes, to reduce the air pollution in our cities we need there to be less cars, less vehicles, more efficiency of fuel use, more public transport more bikes - but people people will say they can't manage without cars (indeed some who's children breath in dangerous pollution every day will say that!). What we've seen in recent years is our govt actually cut measures to reduce pollution (so the rate of car tax on small car increased in 2015, the incentives to put up solar panels reduced in 2015, the govt is busily promoting road building (roads which, if built, will just fill up with? Cars...)). We're going the wrong way...And despite clear evidence we're gong the wrong way, people who dare to protest about that get what sort of recepetion? XR types pilloried here and by the PM and populist press - which to me is further evidence of us not wanting to act, to clean up our act . So why I'm confident we're in a mess is the absolute unwillingness of the populace in general to do anything about pollution, indeed as I've just said it's more likely we will do less - if politics stays as it is. Wrt your second para, well its what happens here but in spades. Again, further evidence of the utter mess we and the planet are in. And again, those who dare to point that out get pilloried - yet such protestors get it, they get the problem and the urgency of it all...

Indeed. But of the total number of murders across the world only a small percentage are in this country. So, what's the point in us trying to stop murder here?

What you say 'a warmer climate' presumably you don't actually mean to imply it IS going to get warmer - since such a 'warmer climate' would be a prediction based upon the output of models you don't think are right... I dunno...

For continued warming? In the global temperature record and in really rather basic atmosphere physics known for, what, well more than a century... I meant the oft quoted 2-4C for a CO2 doubling btw, not .2-.4 C per decades...

On the contrary it is the data that makes me ever more convinced the projections are correct - 2-4C and all that*. In ten years time: the world will be warmer and more degraded and there will still be people saying 'we need to wait until the models are 100% correct before we take >0% action' - some of them will still claim to be scientists too... *perhaps, indeed, more...

Perhaps we should remove all pollution controls then? let the rivers fill with sewerage? Then take catalytic converters out of cars? Tear down wind farms, and take solar panels down too and build more coal powered power stations? While we're about it we could pull up all the railways and put down roads in their places. Because, nothing we do changes a thing - right?

No, of course not. But, by your logic, because people get robbed in countries we also have no control of that means we should not disapprove of robbery and not do something about robbery here? Journeys start with single steps...

XR are trying to draw to the attentions of a largely unconcerned humanity (even people interested in weather, here, are largely unconcerned and mostly just shrug) the reality that our world is being damaged and degraded at an ever faster pace. I don't think 'we're all going to die' but I am sure that (if we carry on as we are - and it seems we will) that the world will be ever more damaged and degraded and ever faster. It IS going to happen - insult me all you like, it is going to happen because the mood of humanity is more in tune with those who attack the messenger than the messengers.. And its not just climate change: loss of habitat and species, ever more plastic, ever less fish, ever less ice, ever higher sea levels, ever more CO2, ever more cars, ever more pollution, ever less trees - only a handful (even here, in a place which should, for example, understand climate) of people are the slightest bit realistic about what we need to do - and I include myself in that criticism... I applaud XRs efforts - that nothing will be done (and in no small part because of the way you and you ilk rubbish people like XR) is an 'achievement' people like you can contemplate over coming years... Oh, 'the role of science'? Is it not to observe and to collect data? Not according to you it isn't...

Tu quoque time again eh

A fight or something more civilised? Heck, maybe even a representative democracy

I haven't listened to your video. Would the video contain: 1, a reasoned set of arguments against XR? 2, a series of insults directed at XR? Me? I really think we need to take anthro climate change seriously. I'm following the Mosaic expedition to study the Arctic sea ice and the contrast between the conditions the 'Farm' experienced in the Arctic on the same dates in1893 and what the 'Polarstern' is experiencing now is so stark I can't see how anyone could not get what is going on, really I can't

She couldn't answer as he kept shouting her down... She tried to answer but every time he just went off on one... How is being shouted down refusing to answer? As to hypocrisy, let he or she without any hypocrisy at all cast the first stone. Are you perfect?

Can you point me to the time when Piers was either not ranting or not shouting at her demanding she answer? It's nearly impossible to answer awhen your questioner won't shut up...

All through history people have said things can't be done. I bet, a few hundred years ago, no one thought diseases could be cured - but a lot have been. I'm pretty sure the first people who identified diseases as being cause by microscopic organisms we're laughed at, ridiculed and called names...Had people protested in favour or vaccination by the injection of substances into people's bodies (before most people understood what it was) most of those protesting would be ridiculed and told to get a job or accused of wanting to harm people - even a few people these days would do that.... People didn't think London's sewers could be built or would solve the problem - they were and they did... Little more than a century ago the idea of humans flying in powered metal vehicles was absurd, the idea we'd be whizzing around the world in our millions would seem like a transportational utopia... All I want is a world where we don't litter. Don't litter the seas with plastic, don't litter the atmosphere with waste gasses. And all I also want is that we treat the world which sustains us with respect. it's our home for heavens sake! It seems that is too much to ask. But it simply isn't and the pressure to change will only increase as the degradation of our planet increases.